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THE PORTRAIT 
OF MR W. H. 




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REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE LAST PAGE OF THE 
MANUSCRIPT OF "THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. ,, 



THE PORTRAIT 
OF MR W. H. 

AS WRITTEN BY 

OSCAR WILDE 



SOME TIME AFTER THE PUB' 
LICATION OF HIS ESSAY, 
OF THE SAME TITLE, AND 
NOW FIRST PRINTED FROM 
THE ORIGINAL ENLARGED 
MANUSCRIPT WHICH FOR 
TWENTY 'SIX YEARS HAS 
BEEN LOST TO THE WORLD 



PUBLISHED 1921 BY 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

489 PARK AVENUE 

NEW YORK 



COPYRIGHT 1 92 1 BY 
MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
PUBLISHERS PRINTING COMPANY 



AUG 11 '21 

©CLA622641 

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THE PORTRAIT 

OFMRW.E 



THE PORTRAIT OF 
MRW.H. 




HAD been dining with Erskine in 
his pretty little house in Birdcage 
Walk, and we were sitting in the 
library over our coffee and ciga- 
rettes, when the question of liter- 
ary forgeries happened to turn up in conversation. 
I cannot at present remember how it was that we 
struck upon this somewhat curious topic, as it was 
at that time, but I know we had a long discussion 
about Macpherson, Ireland, and Chatterton, and 
that with regard to the last I insisted that his sc 
called forgeries were merely the result of an artistic 
desire for perfect representation; that we had no 
right to quarrel with an artist for the conditions 
under which he chooses to present his work; and 
that all Art being to a certain degree a mode of act- 
ing, an attempt to realise one's own personality on 
some imaginative plane out of reach of the tram- 



2 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

melling accidents and limitations of real life, to cen' 
sure an artist for a forgery was to confuse an ethical 
with an aesthetical problem. 

Erskine, who was a good deal older than I was, 
and had been listening to me with the amused def- 
erence of a man of forty, suddenly put his hand 
upon my shoulder and said to me, "What would 
you say about a young man who had a strange 
theory about a certain work of art, believed in his 
theory, and committed a forgery in order to prove 
it?" 

"Ah! that is quite a different matter," I answered. 

Erskine remained silent for a few moments, look' 
ing at the thin grey threads of smoke that were 
rising from his cigarette. "Yes," he said, after a 
pause, "quite different." 

There was something in the tone of his voice, a 
slight touch of bitterness perhaps, that excited my 
curiosity. "Did you ever know anybody who did 
that?" I cried. 

"Yes," he answered, throwing his cigarette into 
the fire — "a great friend of mine, Cyril Graham. 
He was very fascinating, and very foolish, and very 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 3 

heartless. However, he left me the only legacy I 
ever received in my life." 

"What was that?" I exclaimed laughing. Erskine 
rose from his seat, and going over to a tall inlaid 
cabinet that stood between the two windows, un- 
locked it, and came back to where I was sitting, 
carrying a small panel picture set in an old and 
somewhat tarnished Elizabethan frame. 

It was a full-length portrait of a young man in 
late sixteenth-century costume, standing by a table, 
with his right hand resting on an open book. He 
seemed about seventeen years of age, and was of 
quite extraordinary personal beauty, though evi- 
dently somewhat effeminate. Indeed, had it not 
been for the dress and the closely cropped hair, one 
would have said that the face, with its dreamy, wist- 
ful eyes and its delicate scarlet lips, was the face of 
a girl. In manner, and especially in the treatment 
of the hands, the picture reminded one of Francois 
Clouet's later work. The black velvet doublet with 
its fantastically gilded points, and the peacock-blue 
background against which it showed up so pleas- 
antly, and from which it gained such luminous 



4 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

value of colour, were quite in Clouet's style; and 
the two masks of Tragedy and Comedy that hung 
somewhat formally from the marble pedestal had 
that hard severity of touch — so different from the 
facile grace of the Italians — which even at the 
Court of France the great Flemish master never 
completely lost, and which in itself has always been 
a characteristic of the northern temper. 

"It is a charming thing," I cried; "but who is this 
wonderful young man whose beauty Art has so 
happily preserved for us?" 

"This is the portrait of Mr W. H." said Erskine, 
with a sad smile. It might have been a chance ef' 
feet of light, but it seemed to me that his eyes were 
swimming with tears. 

"MrW.H.n repeated; "who was Mr W.H.?" 

"Don t you remember?" he answered; "look at 
the book on which his hand is resting." 

"I see there is some writing there, but I cannot 
make it out," I replied. 

" Take this magnifying'glass and try," said Erskine, 
with the same sad smile still playing about his 
mouth. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 5' 

I took the glass, and moving the lamp a little 
nearer, I began to spell out the crabbed sixteenth' 
century handwriting. "To The Oftlie Begetter Of 
These Insuing Sonnets."" . . . "Good heavens!" I 
cried, "is this Shakespeare's Mr W. H.?" 

"Cyril Graham used to say so," muttered Erskine. 

"But it is not a bit like Lord Pembroke," I rejoined. 
"I know the Wilton portraits very well. I was 
staying near there a few weeks ago." 

"Do you really believe then that the Sonnets are 
addressed to Lord Pembroke?" he asked. 

"I am sure of it," I answered. "Pembroke, Shake- 
speare, and Mrs Mary Fitton are the three person- 
ages of the Sonnets ; there is no doubt at all about it." 

"Well, I agree with you," said Erskine, "but I did 
not always think so. I used to believe — well, I sup' 
pose I used to believe in Cyril Graham and his 
theory." 

"And what was that?" I asked, looking at the 
wonderful portrait, which had already begun to 
have a strange fascination for me. 

"It is a long story," he murmured, taking the pic 
ture away from me — rather abruptly I thought at 



6 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

the time — "a very long story ; but if you care to 
hear it, I will tell it to you." 

"I love theories about the Sonnets," I cried; "but 
I don t think I am likely to be converted to any new 
idea. The matter has ceased to be a mystery to any 
one. Indeed, I wonder that it ever was a mystery." 

"As I dont believe in the theory, I am not likely 
to convert you to it," said Erskine, laughing; "but 
it may interest you." 

"Tell it to me, of course," I answered. "If it is half 
as delightful as the picture, I shall be more than 
satisfied." 

"Well," said Erskine, lighting a cigarette, "I must 
begin by telling you about Cyril Graham himself. 
He and I were at the same house at Eton. I was a 
year or two older than he was, but we were im' 
mense friends, and did all our work and all our play 
together. There was, of course, a good deal more 
play than work, but I cannot say that I am sorry 
for that. It is always an advantage not to have re 
ceived a sound commercial education, and what I 
learned in the playing fields at Eton has been quite 
as useful to me as anything I was taught at Cam' 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 7 

bridge. I should tell you that Cyril's father and 
mother were both dead. They had been drowned 
in a horrible yachting accident off the Isle of Wight. 
His father had been in the diplomatic service, and 
had married a daughter, the only daughter, in fact, 
of old Lord Crediton, who became Cyril's guardian 
after the death of his parents. I don't think that 
Lord Crediton cared very much for Cyril. He had 
never really forgiven his daughter for marrying a 
man who had no title. He was an extraordinary 
old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and 
had the manners of a farmer. I remember seeing him 
once on Speech'day. He growled at me, gave me 
a sovereign, and told me not to grow up a 'damned 
Radical' like my father. Cyril had very little affec 
tion for him, and was only too glad to spend most 
of his holidays with us in Scotland. They never 
really got on together at all. Cyril thought him a 
bear, and he thought Cyril effeminate. He was ef- 
feminate, I suppose, in some things, though he was 
a capital rider and a capital fencer. In fact he got 
the foils before he left Eton. But he was very Ian' 
guid in his manner, and not a little vain of his good 



8 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

looks, and had a strong objection to football, which 
he used to say was a game only suitable for the sons 
of the middle classes. The two things that really 
gave him pleasure were poetry and acting. At Eton 
he was always dressing up and reciting Shakespeare, 
and when we went up to Trinity he became a mem' 
ber of the A.D.C. his first term. I remember I was 
always very jealous of his acting. I was absurdly 
devoted to him; I suppose because we were so 
different in most things. I was a rather awkward, 
weakly lad, with huge feet, and horribly freckled. 
Freckles run in Scotch families just as gout does in 
English families. Cyril used to say that of the two 
he preferred the gout; but he always set an ab' 
surdly high value on personal appearance, and once 
read a paper before our Debating Society to prove 
that it was better to be good'looking than to be 
good. He certainly was wonderfully handsome. 
People who did not like him, Philistines and college 
tutors, and young men reading for the Church, used 
to say that he was merely pretty; but there was a 
great deal more in his face than mere prettiness. I 
think he was the most splendid creature I ever saw, 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 9 

and nothing could exceed the grace of his move' 
ments, the charm of his manner. He fascinated 
everybody who was worth fascinating, and a great 
many people who were not. He was often wilful 
and petulant, and I used to think him dreadfully 
insincere. It was due, I think, chiefly to his inordi' 
nate desire to please. Poor Cyril! I told him once 
that he was contented with very cheap triumphs, 
but he only tossed his head, and smiled. He was 
horribly spoiled. All charming people, I fancy, are 
spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction. 

"However, I must tell you about Cyril's acting. 
You know that no women are allowed to play at the 
A.D.C. At least they were not in my time. Idont 
know how it is now. Well, of course Cyril was 
always cast for the girls 1 parts, and when 'As You 
Like It 1 was produced he played Rosalind. It was 
a marvellous performance. You will laugh at me, 
but I assure you that Cyril Graham was the only 
perfect Rosalind I have ever seen. It would be im* 
possible to describe to you the beauty, the delicacy, 
the refinement of the whole thing. It made an im- 
mense sensation, and the horrid little theatre, as it 



IO THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

was then, was crowded every night. Even now 
when I read the play I cant help thinking of Cyril; 
the part might have been written for him, he played 
it with such extraordinary grace and distinction. 
The next term he took his degree, and came to Lon' 
don to read for the Diplomatic. But he never did 
any work. He spent his days in reading Shake' 
speare's Sonnets, and his evenings at the theatre. He 
was, of course, wild to go on the stage. It was all 
that Lord Crediton and I could do to prevent him. 
Perhaps, if he had gone on the stage he would be 
alive now. It is always a silly thing to give advice, 
but to give good advice is absolutely fatal. I hope 
you will never fall into that error. If you do, you 
will be sorry for it. 

"Well, to come to the real point of the story, 
one afternoon I got a letter from Cyril asking me to 
come round to his rooms that evening. He had 
charming chambers in Piccadilly overlooking the 
Green Park, and as I used to go to see him almost 
every day, I was rather surprised at his taking the 
trouble to write. Of course I went, and when I ar' 
rived I found him in a state of great excitement. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. II 

He told me that he had at last discovered the true 
jsecret of Shakespeare's Sonnets; that all the schol- 
ars and critics had been entirely on the wrong track ; 
and that he was the first who, working purely by 
internal evidence, had found out who Mr W. H. 
really was. He was perfectly wild with delight, and 
for a long time would not tell me his theory. Finally, 
he produced a bundle of notes, took his copy of the 
Sonnets off the mantelpiece, and sat down and gave 
me a long lecture on the whole subject. 

"He began by pointing out that the young man 
to whom Shakespeare addressed these strangely 
passionate poems must have been somebody who 
was a really vital factor in the development of his 
dramatic art, and that this could not be said of 
either Lord Pembroke or Lord Southampton. In- 
deed, whoever he was, he could not have been any- 
body of high birth, as was shown very clearly by 
Sonnet XXV, in which Shakespeare contrasts him- 
self with men who are 'great princes' favourites'; 
says quite frankly — 

'Let those who are in favour with their stars 
Of public honour and proud titles boast, 



12 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, 
Unlooked for joy in that I honour most'; 

and ends the sonnet by congratulating himself on 
the mean state of him he so adored: 

'Then happy I, that love and am beloved 
Where I may not remove nor be removed." 

This sonnet Cyril declared would be quite unintel' 
ligible if we fancied that it was addressed to either 
the Earl of Pembroke or the Earl of Southampton, 
both of whom were men of the highest position 
in England and fully entitled to be called 'great 
princes'; and he in corroboration of his view read 
me Sonnets CXXIV and CXXV, in which Shake- 
speare tells us that his love is not 'the child of state/ 
that it 'suffers not in smiling pomp," but is 'builded 
far from accident." I listened with a good deal of 
interest, for I don't think the point had ever been 
made before; but what followed was still more ai' 
rious, and seemed to me at the time to dispose en' 
tirely of Pembroke's claim. We know from Meres 
that the Sonnets had been written before 1 598, and 
Sonnet CIV informs us that Shakespeare's friend' 
ship for Mr W. H. had been already in existence 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 3 

for three years. Now Lord Pembroke, who was 
born in 1 580, did not come to London till he was 
eighteen years of age, that is to say till 1598, and 
Shakespeare's acquaintance with Mr W. H. must 
have begun in 1 594, or at the latest in 1 595. Shake 
speare, accordingly, could not have known Lord 
Pembroke till after the Sonnets had been written. 
"Cyril pointed out also that Pembroke's father 
did not die till 1601 ; whereas it was evident from 
the line, 

'You had a father, let your son say so,' 
that the father of Mr W. H. was dead in 1598; 
and laid great stress on the evidence afforded by the 
Wilton portraits which represent Lord Pembroke 
as a swarthy dark'haired man, while Mr W. H. was 
one whose hair was like spun gold, and whose face 
the meeting'place for the 'lily's white' and the 'deep 
vermilion in the rose'; being himself 'fair,' and 'red,' 
and 'white and red,' and of beautiful aspect. Besides 
it was absurd to imagine that any publisher of the 
time, and the preface is from the publisher's hand, 
would have dreamed of addressing William Her' 
bert, Earl of Pembroke, as Mr W. H.; the case of 



14 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

Lord Buckhurst being spoken of as Mr Sackville 
being not really a parallel instance, as Lord Buck' 
hurst, the first of that title, was plain Mr Sackville 
when he contributed to the 'Mirror for Magis' 
trates, 1 while Pembroke, during his fathers lifetime, 
was always known as Lord Herbert. So far for Lord 
Pembroke, whose supposed claims Cyril easily de' 
molished while I sat by in wonder. With Lord 
Southampton Cyril had even less difficulty. South' 
ampton became at a very early age the lover of 
Elizabeth Vernon, so he needed no entreaties to 
marry; he was not beautiful; he did not resemble 
his mother, as Mr W. H. did — 

'Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee 
Calls back the lovely April of her prime'; 

and, above all, his Christian name was Henry, 
whereas the punning sonnets (CXXXV and 
CXLIII) show that the Christian name of Shake' 
speare's friend was the same as his own — Will. 

"As for the other suggestions of unfortunate 
commentators, that Mr W. H. is a misprint for Mr 
W. S., meaning Mr William Shakespeare; that 
'Mr W. H. air should be read 'Mr W. Hall 1 ; that 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 5 

Mr W. H. is Mr William Hathaway; that Mr 
W. H. stands for Mr Henry Willobie, the young 
Oxford poet, with the initials of his name reversed; 
and that a full stop should be placed after 'wisheth,' 
making Mr W. H. the writer and not the subject 
of the dedication, — Cyril got rid of them in a very 
short time; and it is not worth while to mention 
his reasons, though I remember he sent me off into 
a fit of laughter by reading to me, I am glad to say 
not in the original, some extracts from a German 
commentator called Barnstorff, who insisted that 
Mr W. H. was no less a person than 'Mr William 
Himself/ Nor would he allow for a moment that 
the Sonnets are mere satires on the work of Dray 
ton and John Davies of Hereford. To him, as indeed 
to me, they were poems of serious and tragic im' 
port, wrung out of the bitterness of Shakespeare's 
heart, and made sweet by the honey of his lips. 
Still less would he admit that they were merely a 
philosophical allegory, and that in them Shake' 
speare is addressing his Ideal Self, or Ideal Man' 
hood, or the Spirit of Beauty, or the Reason, or the 
Divine Logos, or the Catholic Church. He felt, as 



1 6 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

indeed I think we all must feel, that the Sonnets are 
addressed to an individual, — to a particular young 
man whose personality for some reason seems to 
have filled the soul of Shakespeare with terrible 
joy and no less terrible despair. 

"Having in this manner cleared the way, as it 
were, Cyril asked me to dismiss from my mind any 
preconceived ideas I might have formed on the sub' 
ject, and to give a fair and unbiased hearing to his 
own theory. The problem he pointed out was this: 
Who was that young man of Shakespeare's day 
who, without being of noble birth or even of noble 
nature, was addressed by him in terms of such pas' 
sionate adoration that we can but wonder at the 
strange worship, and are almost afraid to turn the 
key that unlocks the mystery of the poet's heart? 
Who was he whose physical beauty was such that 
it became the very corner'Stone of Shakespeare's 
art; the very source of Shakespeare's inspiration; 
the very incarnation of Shakespeare's dreams? To 
look upon him as simply the object of certain love 
poems was to miss the whole meaning of the poems: 
for the art of which Shakespeare talks in the Son' 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 7 

nets is not the art of the Sonnets themselves, which 
indeed were to him but slight and secret things — 
it is the art of the dramatist to which he is always 
alluding ; and he to whom Shakespeare said — 

'Thou art all my art, and dost advance 
As high as learning my rude ignorance,"' — 

he to whom he promised immortality, 

'Where breath most breathes, even in the 
mouths of men,' — - 

he who was to him the tenth 'muse' and 

'Ten times more in worth 
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,' 

was surely none other than the boyactor for whom 
he created Viola and Imogen, Juliet and Rosalind, 
Portia and Desdemona, and Cleopatra herself." 

"The boyactor of Shakespeare's plays?" I cried. 

"Yes," said Erskine. "This was Cyril Graham's 
theory, evolved as you see purely from the Sonnets 
themselves, and depending for its acceptance not 
so much on demonstrable proof or formal evidence, 
but on a kind of spiritual and artistic sense, by 
which alone he claimed could the true meaning of 



1 8 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

the poems be discerned. I remember his reading to 
me that fine sonnet — 

'How can my Muse want subject to invent, 
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my 

verse 
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent 
For every vulgar paper to rehearse? 
O give thyself the thanks, if aught in me 
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight; 
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, 
When thou thyself dost give invention light?' 
— and pointing out how completely it corroborated 
his view; and indeed he went through all the Son' 
nets carefully, and showed, or fancied that he 
showed, that, according to his new explanation of 
their meaning, things that had seemed obscure, or 
evil, or exaggerated, became clear and rational, and 
of high artistic import, illustrating Shakespeare's 
conception of the true relations between the art of 
the actor and the art of the dramatist. 

"It is of course evident that there must have been 
in Shakespeare's company some wonderful boy 
actor of great beauty, to whom he intrusted the 
presentation of his noble heroines; for Shakespeare 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 9 

was a practical theatrical manager as well as an im' 
aginative poet; and Cyril Graham had actually dis' 
covered the boyactor's name. He was Will, or, as 
he preferred to call him, Willie Hughes. The Chris' 
tian name he found of course in the punning 
sonnets, CXXXV and CXLIII; the surname was, 
according to him, hidden in the eighth line of Son' 
net XX, where Mr W. H. is described as— 
* A man in hew, all Hews in his controwling.' 
"In the original edition of the Sonnets 'Hews' is 
printed with a capital letter and in italics, and this, 
he claimed, showed clearly that a play on words 
was intended, his view receiving a good deal of cor' 
roboration from those sonnets in which curious 
puns are made on the words 'use' and 'usury/ and 
from such lines as— 

'Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hew/ 
Of course I was converted at once, and Willie 
Hughes became to me as real a person as Shake' 
speare. The only objection I made to the theory was 
that the name of Willie Hughes does not occur in 
the list of the actors of Shakespeare's company as it 
is printed in the first folio. Cyril, however, pointed 



20 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

out that the absence of Willie Hughes' name from 
this list really corroborated the theory, as it was 
evident from Sonnet LXXXVI, that he had aban' 
doned Shakespeare's company to play at a rival 
theatre, probably in some of Chapman's plays. It 
was in reference to this that in the great sonnet on 
Chapman Shakespeare said to Willie Hughes — 

'But when your countenance filled up his line, 
Then lacked I matter; that enfeebled mine' — 

the expression 'when your countenance filled up 
his line' referring clearly to the beauty of the young 
actor giving life and reality and added charm to 
Chapman's verse, the same idea being also put for' 
ward in Sonnet LXXIX: 

'Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, 
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace, 
But now my gracious numbers are decayed, 
And my sick Muse doth give another place'; 
and in the immediately preceding sonnet, where 
Shakespeare says, 

'Every alien pen hath got my use 
And under thee their poesy disperse,' 
the play upon words (use = Hughes) being of 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 21 

course obvious, and the phrase, 'under thee their 
poesy disperse, 1 meaning 'by your assistance as an 
actor bring their plays before the people/ 

"It was a wonderful evening, and we sat up al' 
most till dawn reading and rereading the Sonnets. 
After some time, however, I began to see that be' 
fore the theory could be placed before the world in 
a really perfected form, it was necessary to get some 
independent evidence about the existence of this 
young actor, Willie Hughes. If this could be once 
established, there could be no possible doubt about 
his identity with Mr W. H.; but otherwise the 
theory would fall to the ground. I put this forward 
very strongly to Cyril, who was a good deal an' 
noyed at what he called my Philistine tone of mind, 
and indeed was rather bitter upon the subject. 
However, I made him promise that in his own in' 
terest he would not publish his discovery till he had 
put the whole matter beyond the reach of doubt; 
and for weeks and weeks we searched the registers 
of City churches, the Alleyn MSS. at Dulwich, the 
Record Office, the books of the Lord Chamberlain 
— everything, in fact, that we thought might con' 



22 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

tain some allusion to Willie Hughes. We discov 
ered nothing, of course, and each day the existence 
of Willie Hughes seemed to me to become more 
problematical. Cyril was in a dreadful state, and 
used to go over the whole question again and again, 
entreating me to believe ; but I saw the one flaw in 
the theory, and I refused to be convinced till the 
actual existence of Willie Hughes, a boyactor of 
the Elizabethan stage, had been placed beyond the 
reach of doubt or cavil. 

"One day Cyril left town to stay with his grand' 
father, I thought at the time, but I afterwards heard 
from Lord Crediton that this was not the case; and 
about a fortnight afterwards I received a telegram 
from him, handed in at Warwick, asking me to be 
sure to come and dine with him in his chambers, 
that evening at eight o'clock. When I arrived, he 
said to me, 'The only apostle who did not deserve 
proof was St. Thomas, and St. Thomas was the 
only apostle who got it/ I asked him what he 
meant. He answered that he had been able not 
merely to establish the existence in the sixteenth 
century of a boyactor of the name of Willie 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 23 

Hughes, but to prove by the most conclusive evi' 
dence that he was the Mr W. H. of the Sonnets. 
He would not tell me anything more at the time; 
but after dinner he solemnly produced the picture 
I showed you, and told me that he had discovered 
it by the merest chance nailed to the side of an old 
chest that he had bought at a farmhouse in War' 
wickshire. The chest itself, which was a very fine 
example of Elizabethan work, and thoroughly au' 
thentic, he had, of course, brought with him, and 
in the centre of the front panel the initials W. H. 
were undoubtedly carved. It was this monogram 
that had attracted his attention, and he told me 
that it was not till he had had the chest in his pos' 
session for several days that he had thought of 
making any careful examination of the inside. One 
morning, however, .he saw that the right'hand 
side of the chest was much thicker than the other, 
and looking more closely, he discovered that a 
framed panel was clamped against it. On taking it 
out, he found it was the picture that is now lying 
on the sofa. It was very dirty, and covered with 
mould; but he managed to clean it, and, to his great 



24 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

joy, saw that he had fallen by mere chance on the 
one thing for which he had been looking. Here 
was an authentic portrait of Mr W. H. with his 
hand resting on the dedicatory page of the Sonnets, 
and on the corner of the picture could be faintly 
seen the name of the young man himself written in 
gold uncial letters on the faded bleu de paon ground, 
'Master Will Hews.' 

"Well, what was I to say? It is quite clear from 
Sonnet XL VII that Shakespeare had a portrait of 
Mr W. H. in his possession, and it seemed to me 
more than probable that here we had the very 
'painted banquet' on which he invited his eye to 
feast; the actual picture that awoke his heart 'to 
heart's and eye's delight.' It never occurred to me 
for a moment that Cyril Graham was playing a 
trick on me, or that he was trying to prove his 
theory by means of a forgery-" 

"But is it a forgery?" I asked. 

"Of course it is," said Erskine. "It is a very good 
forgery; but it is a forgery none the less. I thought 
at the time that Cyril was rather calm about the 
whole matter; but I remember he kept telling me 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 25 

that he himself required no proof of the kind, and 
that he thought the theory complete without it. I 
laughed at him, and told him that without it the 
entire theory would fall to the ground, and I 
warmly congratulated him on his marvellous dis' 
covery. We then arranged that the picture should 
be etched or facsimiled, and placed as the frontis- 
piece to Cyril's edition of the Sonnets; and for 
three months we did nothing but go over each 
poem line by line, till we had settled every diffi- 
culty of text or meaning. One unlucky day I was 
in a print'shop in Holborn, when I saw upon the 
counter some extremely beautiful drawings in sil- 
ver-point. I was so attracted by them that I bought 
them; and the proprietor of the place, a man called 
Rawlings, told me that they were done by a young 
painter of the name of Edward Merton, who was 
very clever, but as poor as a church mouse. I went 
to see Merton some days afterwards, having got 
his address from the print-seller, and found a pale, 
interesting young man, with a rather common-look- 
ing wife, — his model, as I subsequently learned. I 
told him how much I admired his drawings, at 



26 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

which he seemed very pleased, and I asked him if 
he would show me some of his other work. As we 
were looking over a portfolio, full of really very 
lovely things, — for Merton had a most delicate and 
delightful touch, — I suddenly caught sight of a 
drawing of the picture of Mr W. H. There was 
no doubt whatever about it. It was almost a fac- 
simile, — the only difference being that the two 
masks of Tragedy and Comedy were not lying on 
the floor at the young man's feet, as they were in 
the picture, but were suspended by gilt ribands. 
'Where on earth did you get that?' I asked. He grew 
rather confused, and said, — 'Oh, that is nothing. I 
did not know it was in this portfolio. It is not a 
thing of any value. 1 'It is what you did for Mr Cyril 
Graham,' exclaimed his wife; 'and if this gentleman 
wishes to buy it, let him have it. 1 'For Mr Cyril 
Graham?' I repeated. 'Did you paint the picture of 
Mr W. H.? 1 'I don't understand what you mean,' 
he answered, growing very red. Well, the whole 
thing was quite dreadful. The wife let it all out. 
I gave her five pounds when I was going away. I 
can't bear to think of it, now; but of course I was 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 27 

furious. I went off at once to Cyril's chambers, 
waited there for three hours before he came in, with 
that horrid lie staring me in the face, and told him 
I had discovered his forgery. He grew very pale, 
and said, — 'I did it purely for your sake. You would 
not be convinced in any other way. It does not 
affect the truth of the theory. 1 'The truth of the 
theory!' I exclaimed; 'the less we talk about that 
the better. You never even believed in it yourself. 
If you had, you would not have committed a for' 
gery to prove it.' High words passed between us; 
we had a fearful quarrel. I daresay I was unjust, 
and the next morning he was dead." 

"Dead!" I cried. 

"Yes, he shot himself with a revolver. By the 
time I arrived, — his servant had sent for me at 
once, — the police were already there. He had left 
a letter for me, evidently written in the greatest 
agitation and distress of mind." . 

"What was in it?" I asked. 

"Oh, that he believed absolutely in Willie 
Hughes; that the forgery of the picture had been 
done simply as a concession to me, and did not in the 



28 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

slightest degree invalidate the truth of the theory; 
and that in order to show me how firm and flaw 
less his faith in the whole thing was, he was going 
to offer his life as a sacrifice to the secret of the Son' 
nets. It was a foolish, mad letter. I remember he 
ended by saying that he'intrusted to me the Willie 
Hughes theory, and that it was for me to present 
it to the world, and to unlock the secret of Shake' 
speare 1 s heart. 11 

"It is a most tragic story, 11 1 cried, "but why have 
you not carried out his wishes? 11 

Erskine shrugged his shoulders. "Because it is a 
perfectly unsound theory from beginning to end, 11 
he answered. 

"My dear Erskine, 11 1 exclaimed, getting up from 
my seat, "you are entirely wrong about the whole 
matter. It is the only perfect key to Shakespeare's 
Sonnets that has ever been made. It is complete in 
every detail. I believe in Willie Hughes." 

"Dont say that, 11 said Erskine, gravely; "I believe 
there is something fatal about the idea, and intel' 
lectually there is nothing to be said for it. I have 
gone into the whole matter, and I assure you the 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 29 

theory is entirely fallacious. It is plausible up to a 
certain point. Then it stops. For heavens sake, my 
dear boy, don't take up the subject of Willie Hughes. 
You will break your heart over it." 

"Erskine," I answered, "it is your duty to give 
this theory to the world. If you will not do it, I 
will. By keeping it back you wrong the memory of 
Cyril Graham, the youngest and the most splendid 
of all the martyrs of literature. I entreat you to do 
him this bare act of justice. He died for this thing, — 
don't let his death be in vain." 

Erskine looked at me in amazement. "You are 
carried away by the sentiment of the whole story," 
he said. "You forget that a thing is not necessarily 
true because a man dies for it. I was devoted to 
Cyril Graham. His death was a horrible blow to me. 
I did not recover from it for years. I don't think I 
have ever recovered from it. But Willie Hughes! 
There is nothing in the idea of Willie Hughes. No 
such person ever existed. As for bringing the mat' 
ter before the world, — the world thinks that Cyril 
Graham shot himself by accident. The only proof 
of his suicide was contained in the letter to me, and 



30 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

of this letter the public never heard anything. To 
the present day Lord Crediton is under the impres' 
sion that the whole thing was accidental." 

"Cyril Graham sacrificed his life to a great idea," 
I answered; "and if you will not tell of his martyr' 
dom, tell at least of his faith." 

"His faith," said Erskine, "was fixed in a thing 
that was false, in a thing that was unsound, in a 
thing that no Shakespearian scholar would accept 
for a moment. The theory would be laughed at. 
Don't make a fool of yourself, and don't follow a 
trail that leads nowhere. You start by assuming 
the existence of the very person whose existence is 
the thing to be proved. Besides, everybody knows 
that the Sonnets were addressed to Lord Pembroke. 
The matter is settled once for all." 

"The matter is not settled," I exclaimed. "I will 
take up the theory where Cyril Graham left it, and 
I will prove to the world that he was right." 

"Silly boy!" said Erskine. "Go home, it is after 
three, and don't think about Willie Hughes any 
more. I am sorry I told you anything about it, and 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 3 1 

very sorry indeed that I should have converted 
you to a thing in which I don't believe." 

"You have given me the key to the greatest mys' 
tery of modern literature," I answered; "and I will 
not rest till I have made you recognise, till I have 
made everybody recognise, that Cyril Graham 
was the most subtle Shakespearian critic of our 
day." 

I was about to leave the room when Erskine 
called me back. "My dear fellow," he said, "let me 
advise you not to waste your time over the Son' 
nets. I am quite serious. After all, what do they 
tell us about Shakespeare? Simply that he was the 
slave of beauty." 

"Well, that is the condition of being an artist!" 
I replied. 

There was a strange silence for a few moments. 
Then Erskine got up, and looking at me with half 
closed eyes, said, "Ah! how you remind me of Cyril! 
He used to say just that sort of thing to me." He 
tried to smile, but there was a note of poignant pa' 
thos in his voice that I remember to the present day, 
as one remembers the tone of a particular violin that 



32 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

has charmed one, the touch of a particular woman's 
hand. The great events of life often leave one un- 
moved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when 
one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scar- 
let flowers of passion seem to grow in the same 
meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the 
burden of their memory, and have anodynes against 
them. But the little things, the things of no mo- 
ment, remain with us. In some tiny ivory cell the 
brain stores the most delicate, and the most fleeting 
impressions. 

As I walked home through St. James's Park, the 
dawn was just breaking over London. The swans 
were lying asleep on the smooth surface of the pol- 
ished lake, like white feathers fallen upon a mirror 
of black steel. The gaunt Palace looked purple 
against the pale green sky, and in the garden of Staf- 
ford House the birds were just beginning to sing. I 
thought of Cyril Graham, and my eyes filled with 
tears. 



II 

It was past twelve o'clock when I awoke, and 
the sun was streaming in through the curtains of 
my room in long dusty beams of tremulous gold. I 
told my servant that I would not be at home to 
any one, and after I had discussed a cup of chocc 
late and a petiPpain, I took out of the library my 
copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and Mr Tylers fac 
simile edition of the Quarto, and began to go care- 
fully through them. Each poem seemed to me to 
corroborate Cyril Graham's theory. I felt as if I 
had my hand upon Shakespeare's heart, and was 
counting each separate throb and pulse of passion. 
I thought of the wonderful boy actor, and saw his 
face in every line. 

Previous to this, in my Lord Pembroke days, if I 
may so term them, I must admit that it had always 
seemed to me very difficult to understand how the 
creator of Hamlet and Lear and Othello could have 
addressed in such extravagant terms of praise and 



34 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

passion one who was merely an ordinary young 
nobleman of the day. Along with most students 
of Shakespeare, I had found myself compelled to 
set the Sonnets apart as things quite alien to Shake 
speare's development as a dramatist, as things pos- 
sibly unworthy of the intellectual side of his nature. 
But now that I began to realise the truth of Cyril 
Graham's theory, I saw that the moods and pas' 
sions they mirrored were absolutely essential to 
Shakespeare's perfection as an artist writing for the 
Elizabethan stage, and that it was in the curious 
theatric conditions of that stage that the poems 
themselves had their origin. I remember what joy 
I had in feeling that these wonderful Sonnets, 

"Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical 
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair," 

were no longer isolated from the great aesthetic 
energies of Shakespeare's life, but were an essential 
part of his dramatic' activity, and revealed to us 
something of the secret of his method. To have 
discovered the true name of Mr W. H. was com' 
paratively nothing: others might have done that, 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 35 

had perhaps done it: but to have discovered his 
profession was a revolution in criticism. 

Two sonnets, I remember, struck me particu' 
larly. In the first of these (LIII) Shakespeare, com' 
plimenting Willie Hughes on the versatility of his 
acting, on his wide range of parts, a range extend' 
ing, as we know, from Rosalind to Juliet, and from 
Beatrice to Ophelia, says to him: — 

"What is your substance, whereof are you made, 
That millions of strange shadows on you tend? 
Since every one hath, every one, one shade, 
And you, but one, can every shadow lend"— 

lines that would be unintelligible if they were not 
addressed to an actor, for the word "shadow" had 
in Shakespeare's day a technical meaning connected 
with the stage. "The best in this kind are but 
shadows," says Theseus of the actors in the "Mid' 
summer Night's Dream"; 

"Life's but a walking shadow, and poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage," 

cries Macbeth in the moment of his despair, and 
there are many similar allusions in the literature of 
the day. This sonnet evidently belonged to the 



36 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

series in which Shakespeare discusses the nature of 
the actor's art, and of the strange and rare temper' 
ament that is essential to the perfect stage^player. 
"How is it," says Shakespeare to Willie Hughes, 
"that you have so many personalities?" and then he 
goes on to point out that his beauty is such that it 
seems to realise every form and phase of fancy, to 
embody each dream of the creative imagination, — 
an idea that is still further expanded in the sonnet 
that immediately follows, where, beginning with 
the fine thought, 

"O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem 
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!" 

Shakespeare invites us to notice how the truth of 
acting, the truth of visible presentation on the stage, 
adds to the wonder of poetry, giving life to its love 
liness, and actual reality to its ideal form. And yet, 
in Sonnet LXVII, Shakespeare calls upon Willie 
Hughes to abandon the stage with its artificiality, 
its unreal life of painted face and mimic costume, its 
immoral influences and suggestions, its remoteness 
from the true world of noble action and sincere ut- 
terance. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 37 

"Ah, wherefore with infection should he live, 
And with his presence grace impiety, 
That sin by him advantage should receive, 
And lace itself with his society? 
Why should false painting imitate his cheek, 
And steal dead seeing of his living hue? 
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek 
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?" 

It may seem strange that so great a dramatist as 
Shakespeare, who realised his own perfection as an 
artist and his full humanity as a man on the ideal 
plane of stagcwriting and stage'playing, should 
have written in these terms about the theatre; but 
we must remember that in Sonnets CX and CXI, 
Shakespeare shows us that he too was wearied of 
the world of puppets, and full of shame at having 
made himself "a motley to the view." Sonnet CXI 
is especially bitter: — 

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means which public manners 

breeds. 
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 



38 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand: 
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed" — 

and there are many signs of the same feeling else' 
where, signs familiar to all real students of Shake' 
speare. 

One point puzzled me immensely as I read the 
Sonnets, and it was days before I struck on the true 
interpretation, which indeed Cyril Graham him' 
self seemed to have missed. I could not understand 
how it was that Shakespeare set so high a value on 
his young friend marrying. He himself had married 
young and the result had been unhappiness, and it 
was not likely that he would have asked Willie 
Hughes to commit the same error. The boyplayer 
of Rosalind had nothing to gain from marriage, or 
from the passions of real life. The early sonnets 
with their strange entreaties to love children 
seemed to be a jarring note. 

The explanation of the mystery came on me quite 
suddenly and I found it in the curious dedication. 
It will be remembered that this dedication was as 
follows: — 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 39 

"TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF . 

THESE . INSUING . SONNETS . 

MR.W.H. ALL.HAPPINESSE. 

AND . THAT . ETERNITIE . 

PROMISED. BY. 

OUR . EVER-LIVING . POET. 

WISHETH . 

THE . WELL-WISHING . 

ADVENTURER. IN. 

SETTING . 

FORTH. 

Some scholars have supposed that the word 
"begetter" here means simply the procurer of the 
Sonnets for Thomas Thorpe the publisher; but this 
view is now generally abandoned, and the highest 
authorities are quite agreed that it is to be taken in 
the sense of inspirer, the metaphor being drawn from' 
the analogy of physical life. Now I saw that the same 
metaphor was used by Shakespeare himself all 
through the poems, and this set me on the right 
track. Finally I made my great discovery. The mar- 
riage that Shakespeare proposes for Willie Hughes 



40 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

is the "marriage with his Muse,"an expression which 
is definitely put forward in Sonnet LXXXII where, 
in the bitterness of his heart at the defection of the 
boy-actor for whom he had written his greatest 
parts, and whose beauty had indeed suggested 
them, he opens his complaint by saying — 

"I grant thou wert not married to my Muse.'" 
The children he begs him to beget are no children 
of flesh and blood, but more immortal children of 
undying fame. The whole cycle of the early sonnets 
is simply Shakespeare's invitation to Willie Hughes 
to go upon the stage and become a player. How 
barren and profitless a thing, he says, is this beauty 
of yours if it be not used: 

"When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, 
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, 
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, 
Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held: 
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies, 
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, 
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, 
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise." 

You must create something in art: my verse "is 
thine and born of thee"; only listen to me, and I will 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 4 1 

"bring forth eternal numbers to outlive long date," 
and you shall people with forms of your own image 
the imaginary world of the stage. These children 
that you beget, he continues, will not wither away, 
as mortal children do, but you shall live in them and 
in my plays: do but — 

"Make thee another self, for love of me, 
That beauty still may live in thine or thee!" 

Be not afraid to surrender your personality, to give 
your "semblance to some other": 

"To give away yourself keeps yourself still, 
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet 
skill" 

I may not be learned in astrology, and yet, in those 
"constant stars" your eyes, 

"I read such art 
As truth and beauty shall together thrive, 
If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert." 

What does it matter about others? 

"Let those whom Nature hath not made for 

store, 
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish": 

With you it is different, Nature — 



42 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

"carv'd thee for her seal, and meant thereby 
Thou shouldst print more, nor let that copy 
die." 

Remember, too, how soon Beauty forsakes itself. 
Its action is no stronger than a flower, and like a 
flower it lives and dies. Think of "the stormy gusts 
of winters day," of the "barren edge of Death's 
eternal cold," and — 

"ere thou be distilled, 
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some 

place 
With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-killed." 

Why, even flowers do not altogether die. When 
roses wither, 

"Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours 
made": 

and you who are "my rose" should not pass away 
without leaving your form in Art. For Art has the 
very secret of joy. 

"Ten times thyself were happier than thou art, 
If ten of thine ten times refigur'd thee." 

You do not require the "bastard signs of fair," the 
painted face, the fantastic disguises of other actors: 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 43 

"... the golden tresses of the dead, 
. The right of sepulchres," 

need not be shorn away for you. In you — 

" . . those holy antique hours are seen, 
Without all ornament, itself and true, 
Making no summer of another's green." 

All that is necessary is to "copy what in you is 
writ 11 ; to place you on the stage as you are in actual 
life. All those ancient poets who have written of 
"ladies dead and lovely knights 11 have been dream' 
ing of such a one as you, and — 

"All their praises are but prophecies 
Of this our time, all you prefiguring." 

For your beauty seems to belong to all ages and to 
all lands. Your shade comes to visit me at night, 
but, I want to look upon your "shadow" in the 
living day, I want to see you upon the stage. Mere 
description of you will not suffice: 

"If I could write the beauty of your eyes, 
And in fresh numbers number all your graces, 
The age to come would say, 'This poet lies; 
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly 

r 1 11 

races. 



44 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

It is necessary that "some child of yours," some ar' 
tistic creation that embodies you, and to which 
your imagination gives life, shall present you to the 
world's wondering eyes. Your own thoughts are 
your children, offspring of sense and spirit; give 
some expression to them, and you shall find — 

"Those children nursed, delivered from thy 
brain. ,, 
My thoughts, also, are my "children" They are of 
your begetting and my brain is — 

"the womb wherein they grew." 
For this great friendship of ours is indeed a mar' 
riage, it is the "marriage of true minds." 

I collected together all the passages that seemed 
to me to corroborate this view, and they produced 
a strong impression on me, and showed me how 
complete Cyril Graham's theory really was. I also 
saw that it was quite easy to separate those lines 
in which Shakespeare speaks of the Sonnets them' 
selves, from those in which he speaks of his great 
dramatic work. This was a point that had been en' 
tirely overlooked by all critics up to Cyril Graham's 
day. And yet it was one of the most important in 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 45 

the whole series of poems. To the Sonnets Shake' 
speare was more or less indifferent. He did not wish 
to rest his fame on them. They were to him his 
"slight Muse,"" as he calls them, and intended, as 
Meres tells us, for private circulation only among 
a few, a very few, friends. Upon the other hand 
he was extremely conscious of the high artistic 
value of his plays, and shows a noble self-reliance 
upon his dramatic genius. When he says to Willie 
Hughes: 

"But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; 
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderst in his 

shade, 
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: 
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, 
So long lives this and this gives life to thee"; — - 

the expression "eternal lines" clearly alludes to one 
of his plays that he was sending him at the time, 
just as the concluding couplet points to his confi' 
dence in the probability of his plays being always 
acted. In his address to the Dramatic Muse (Son' 
nets C and CI) we find the same feeling. 



46 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

"Where art thou, Muse, that thou forgefst 

so long 
To speak of that which gives thee all thy 

might? 
SpencTst thou thy fury on some worthless 

song, 
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects 

light?" 

he cries, and he then proceeds to reproach the mis' 
tress of Tragedy and Comedy for her "neglect of 
truth in beauty dyed," and says — 

"Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be 

dumb? 
Excuse not silence so; for 't lies in thee 
To make him much outlive a gilded tomb, 
And to be praised of ages yet to be. 
Then do thy office, Muse, I teach thee how, 
To make him seem long hence as he shows 
now." 

It is, however, perhaps in Sonnet LV that Shake" 
speare gives to this idea its fullest expression. To 
imagine that the "powerful rhyme" of the second 
line refers to the sonnet itself was entirely to mis' 
take Shakespeare's meaning. It seemed to me that 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 47 

it was extremely likely, from the general character 
of the sonnet, that a particular play was meant, 
and that the play was none other but "Romeo and 
Juliet." 

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme; 
But you shall shine more bright in these 

contents 
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish 

time. 
When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 
And broils root out the work of masonry, 
Not Mars his sword nor wars quick fire shall 

burn 
The living record of your memory. 
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity 
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find 

room 
Even in the eyes of all posterity 
That wear this world out to the ending doom. 
So, till the judgment that yourself arise, 
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes." 
It was also very suggestive to note how here as else 
where Shakespeare promised Willie Hughes mv 
mortality in a form that appealed to mens eyes — 



48 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

that is to say, In a spectacular form, in a play that is 
to be looked at. 

For two weeks I worked hard at the Sonnets, 
hardly ever going out, and refusing all invitations. 
Every day I seemed to be discovering something 
new, and Willie Hughes became to me a kind of 
spiritual presence, an ever-dominant personality. I 
could almost fancy that I saw him standing in the 
shadow of my room, so well had Shakespeare drawn 
him, with his golden hair, his tender flower-like 
grace, his dreamy deep-sunken eyes, his delicate mo- 
bile limbs, and his white lily hands. His very name 
fascinated me.Willie Hughes ! Willie Hughes ! How 
musically it sounded! Yes; who else but he could 
have been the master^mistress of Shakespeare's pas- 
sion, 1 the lord of his love to whom he was bound in 
vassalage, 2 the delicate minion of pleasure, 3 the rose 
of the whole world, 4 the herald of the spring, 5 decked 
in the proud livery of youth, 6 the lovely boy whom 
it was sweet music to hear, 7 and whose beauty was 
the very raiment of Shakespeare's heart, 8 as it was 



'Sonnet XX. 2. * Sonnet XXVI. 1. ' Sonnet CXXVI. 9. 

•Sonnet CIX. 14. 6 Sonnet I. 10. "Sonnet II. 3. 

'.Sonnet VIII. 1. 8 Sonnet XXII. 6. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 49 

the keystone of his dramatic power? How bitter 
now seemed the whole tragedy of his desertion and 
his shame! — shame that he made sweet and lovely 1 
by the mere magic of his personality, but that was 
none the less shame. Yet as Shakespeare forgave 
him, should not we forgive him also? I did not care 
to pry into the mystery of his sin or of the sin, if such 
it was, of the great poet who had so dearly loved 
him. "I am that I am," said Shakespeare in a sonnet 
of noble scorn, — 

"I am that I am, and they that level 
At my abuses reckon up their own; 
I may be straight, though they themselves be 

bevel; 
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be 

shown." 

Willie Hughes 1 abandonment of Shakespeare's 
theatre was a different matter, and I investigated it 
at great length. Finally I came to the conclusion 
that Cyril Graham had been wrong in regarding 
the rival dramatist of Sonnet LXXX as Chapman. 
It was obviously Marlowe who was alluded to. At 

» Sonnet XCV. I. 



50 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

the time the Sonnets were written, which must have 
been between 1590 and 1595, such an expression as 
"the proud full sail of his great verse" could not pos' 
sibly have been used of Chapman's work, however 
applicable it might have been to the style of his later 
Jacobean plays. No ; Marlowe was clearly the rival 
poet of whom Shakespeare spoke in such laudatory 
terms; the hymn he wrote in Willie Hughes 1 honour 
was the unfinished "Hero and Leander," and that 

"Affable familiar ghost 
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence," 

was the Mephistophilis of his Doctor Faustus. No 
doubt, Marlowe was fascinated by the beauty and 
grace of the boyactor, and lured him away from the 
Blackfriars Theatre, that he might play the Gaves' 
ton of his "Edward II." That Shakespeare had some 
legal right to retain Willie Hughes in his own com' 
pany seems evident from Sonnet LXXXVII, where 
he says: — 

"Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, 
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate: 
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; 
My bonds in thee are all determinate. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 5 1 

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? 
And for that riches where is my deserving? 
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, 
And 50 my patent bac\ again is swerving. 
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not 

knowing, 
Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking; 
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, 
Comes home again, on better judgment making. 
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter, 
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter." 

But him whom he could not hold by love, he 
would not hold by force. Willie Hughes became a 
member of Lord Pembroke's company, and perhaps 
in the open yard of the Red Bull Tavern, played the 
part of King Edward's delicate minion. On Mar' 
lowe's death, he seems to have returned to Shake- 
speare, who, whatever his fellow-partners may 
have thought of the matter, was not slow to for- 
give the wilfulness and treachery of the young 
actor. 

How well, too, had Shakespeare drawn the tem- 
perament of the stage-player! Willie Hughes was 
one of those — 



52 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

"That do not do the thing they most do show, 
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone."" 

He could act love, but could not feel it, could mimic 
passion without realising it. 

"In many's looks the false heart's history 
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles 
strange," 

but with Willie Hughes it was not so. "Heaven," 
says Shakespeare, in a sonnet of mad idolatry — 
"Heaven in thy creation did decree 
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell; 
Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's work- 
ings be, 
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweet' 
ness tell." 

In his "inconstant mind" and his "false heart" it 
was easy to recognise the insincerity that somehow 
seems inseparable from the artistic nature, as in his 
love of praise, that desire for immediate recognition 
that characterises all actors. And yet, more fortu- 
nate in this than other actors, Willie Hughes was 
to know something of immortality. Intimately con- 
nected with Shakespeare's plays, he was to live in 
them, and by their production. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 53 

"Your name from hence immortal life shall have, 
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: 
The earth can yield me but a common grave, 
When you entombed in mens eyes shall lie. 
Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er^read, 
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, 
When all the breathers of this world are dead." 

Nash with his venomous tongue had railed 
against Shakespeare for "reposing eternity in the 
mouth of a player," the reference being obviously 
to the Sonnets. 

But to Shakespeare, the actor was a deliberate 
and self-conscious fellowworker who gave form 
and substance to a poet's fancy, and brought into 
Drama the elements of a noble realism. His silence 
could be as eloquent as words, and his gesture as 
expressive, and in those terrible moments of Titan 
agony or of god'like pain, when thought outstrips 
utterance, when the soul sick with excess of an' 
guish stammers or is dumb, and the very raiment 
of speech is rent and torn by passion in its storm, 
then the actor could become, though it were but 



54 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

for a moment, a creative artist, and touch by his 
mere presence and personality those springs of ter- 
ror and of pity to which tragedy appeals. This full 
recognition of the actor's art, and of the actor's 
power, was one of the things that distinguished the 
Romantic from the Classical Drama, and one of the 
things, consequently, that we owed to Shakespeare, 
who, fortunate in much, was fortunate also in this, 
that he was able to find Richard Burbage and to 
fashion Willie Hughes. 

With what pleasure he dwelt upon Willie 
Hughes' influence over his audience — the "gazers" 
as he calls them; with what charm of fancy did he 
analyse the whole art! Even in the "Lovers Com' 
plaint" he speaks of his acting, and tells us that he 
was of a nature so impressionable to the quality of 
dramatic situations that he could assume all "strange 
forms" — 

tl Of burning blushes, or of weeping water, 
Or swooning paleness": 

explaining his meaning more fully later on where 
he tells us how Willie Hughes was able to deceive 
others by his wonderful power to — 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 55 

"Blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes, 
Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows." 

It had never been pointed out before that the shep' 
herd of this lovely pastoral, whose "youth in art 
and art in youth" are described with such subtlety 
of phrase and passion, was none other than the Mr 
W. H. of the Sonnets. And yet there was no doubt 
that he was so. Not merely in personal appearance 
are the two lads the same, but their natures and 
temperaments are identical. When the false shep- 
herd whispers to the fickle maid — 

"All my offences that abroad you see 
Are errors of the blood, none of the mind; 
Love made them not": 

when he says of his lovers, 

"Harm have I done to them, but ne'er was 

harmed; 
Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free, 
And reigned, commanding in his monarchy": 

when he tells us of the "deep-brained sonnets" that 
one of them had sent him, and cries out in boyish 
pride — 



56 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

"The broken bosoms that to me belong 
Have emptied all their fountains in my well": 

it is impossible not to feel that it is Willie Hughes 
who is speaking to us. "Deep'brained sonnets," in' 
deed, had Shakespeare brought him, "jewels" that 
to his careless eyes were but as "trifles," though — 

"each several stone, 
With wit well blazoned, smiled or made some 
moan"; 

and into the well of beauty he had emptied the 
sweet fountain of his song. That in both places it 
was an actor who was alluded to, was also clear. 
The betrayed nymph tells us of the "false fire" in 
her lover's cheek, of the "forced thunder" of his 
sighs, and of his "borrowed motion": of whom, in' 
deed, but of an actor could it be said that to him 
"thought, characters, and words" were "merely 
Art," or that — 

"To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep, 
He had the dialect and different skill, 
Catching all passions in his craft of will"? 

The play on words in the last line is the same as 
that used in the punning sonnets, and is continued 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 57 

in the following stanza of the poem, where we are 
told of the youth who — 

"did in the general bosom reign 
Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted," 
that there were those who — 

" . . dialogued for him what he would say, 
Asked their own wills, and made their Wills 
obey." 

Yes: the "rosccheeked Adonis" of the Venus 
poem, the false shepherd of the "Lovers Com' 
plaint," the " tender churl," the "beauteous niggard" 
of the Sonnets, was none other but a young actor; 
and as I read through the various descriptions given 
of him, I saw that the love that Shakespeare bore 
him was as the love of a musician for some delicate 
instrument on which he delights to play, as a sculp" 
tor s love for some rare and exquisite material that 
suggests a new form of plastic beauty, a new mode 
of plastic expression. For all Art has its medium, its 
material, be it that of rhythmical words, or of pleas' 
urable colour, or of sweet and subtlydivided sound; 
and, as one of the most fascinating critics of our day 
has pointed out, it is to the qualities inherent in 



58 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

each material, and special to it, that we owe the 
sensuous element in Art, and with it all that in Art 
is essentially artistic. What then shall we say of 
the material that the Drama requires for its perfect 
presentation? What of the Actor, who is the me' 
dium through which alone the Drama can truly 
reveal itself? Surely, in that strange mimicry of life 
by the living which is the mode and method of 
Theatric art, there are sensuous elements of beauty 
that none of the other arts possess. Looked at from 
one point of view, the common players of the saf- 
fron-strewn stage are Art's most complete, most 
satisfying instruments. There is no passion in 
bronze, nor motion in marble. The sculptor must 
surrender colour, and the painter fullness of form. 
The epos changes acts into words, and music 
changes words into tones. It is the Drama only 
that, to quote the fine saying of Gervinus, uses all 
means at once, and, appealing both to eye and ear, 
has at its disposal, and in its service, form and col' 
our, tone, look, and word, the swiftness of motion, 
the intense realism of visible action. 

It may be that in this very completeness of the 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 59 

instrument lies the secret of some weakness in the 
art. Those arts are happiest that employ a material 
remote from reality, and there is a danger in the ab' 
solute identity of medium and matter, the danger 
of ignoble realism and unimaginative imitation. Yet 
Shakespeare himself was a player, and wrote for 
players. He saw the possibilities that lay hidden in 
an art that up to his time had expressed itself but 
in bombast or in clowning. He has left us the most 
perfect rules for acting that have ever been written. 
He created parts that can be only truly revealed to 
us on the stage, wrote plays that need the theatre 
for their full realisation, and we cannot marvel that 
he so worshipped one who was the interpreter of 
his vision, as he was the incarnation of his dreams. 
There was, however, more in this friendship than 
the mere delight of a dramatist in one who helps 
him to achieve his end. This was indeed a subtle 
element of pleasure, if not of passion, and a noble 
basis for an artistic comradeship. But it was not all 
that the Sonnets revealed to us. There was some' 
thing beyond. There was the soul, as well as the 
language, of necPlatonism. 



60 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wis' 
dom," said the stern Hebrew prophet: "The begin' 
ning of wisdom is Love," was the gracious message 
of the Greek. And the spirit of the Renaissance, 
which already touched Hellenism at so many points, 
catching the inner meaning of this phrase and di' 
vining its secret, sought to elevate friendship to the 
high dignity of the antique ideal, to make it a vital 
factor in the new culture, and a mode of self-con' 
scious intellectual development. In 1492 appeared 
Marsilio Ficino's translation of the "Symposium" of 
Plato, and this wonderful dialogue, of all the Pla- 
tonic dialogues perhaps the most perfect, as it is the 
most poetical, began to exercise a strange influence 
over men, and to colour their words and thoughts, 
and manner of living. In its subtle suggestions of sex 
in soul, in the curious analogies it draws between 
intellectual enthusiasm and the physical passion of 
love, in its dream of the incarnation of the Idea in 
a beautiful and living form, and of a real spiritual 
conception with a travail and a bringing to birth, 
there was something that fascinated the poets and 
scholars of the sixteenth century. Shakespeare, cer- 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 6 1 

tainly, was fascinated by it, and had read the dia' 
logue, if not in Ficino's translation, of which many 
copies found their way to England, perhaps in that 
French translation by Leroy to which Joachim du 
Bellay contributed so many graceful metrical ver* 
sions. When he says to Willie Hughes, 

"he that calls on thee, let him bring forth 
Eternal numbers to outlive long date," 
he is thinking of Diotima's theory that Beauty is 
the goddess who presides over birth, and draws into 
the light of day the dim conceptions of the soul: 
when he tells us of the "marriage of true minds," and 
exhorts his friend to beget children that time can' 
not destroy, he is but repeating the words in which 
the prophetess tells us that "friends are married by 
a far nearer tie than those who beget mortal chil' 
dren, for fairer and more immortal are the children 
who are their common offspring." So, also t Edward 
Blount in his dedication of "Hero and Leander" talks 
of Marlowe's works as his "right children," being 
the "issue of his brain"; and when Bacon claims that 
"the best works and of greatest merit for the public 
have proceeded from the unmarried and childless 



62 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

men, which both in affection and means have mar' 
ried and endowed the public," he is paraphrasing 
a passage in the "Symposium.'" 

Friendship, indeed, could have desired no better 
warrant for its permanence or its ardours than the 
Platonic theory, or creed, as we might better call it, 
that the true world was the world of ideas, and that 
these ideas took visible form and became incarnate 
in man, and it is only when we realise the influence 
of neo-Platonism on the Renaissance that we can 
understand the true meaning of the amatory phrases 
and words with which friends were wont, at this 
time, to address each other. There was a kind of 
mystic transference of the expressions of the physi' 
caL sphere to a sphere that was spiritual, that was 
removed from gross bodily appetite, and in which 
the soul- was Lord. Love had, indeed, entered the 
olive garden of the new Academe, but he wore the 
same flame'coloured raiment, and had the same 
words of passion on his lips. 

MichaeL Angelo, the "haughtiest spirit in Italy" 
as he has been called, addresses the young Tommaso 
Cavalieri in such fervent and passionate terms that 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W, H. 63 

some have thought that the sonnets in question 
must have been intended for that noble lady, the 
widow of the Marchese di Pescara, whose white 
hand, when she was dying, the great sculptor's lips 
had stooped to kiss. But that it was to Cavalieri 
that they were written, and that the literal inter' 
pretation is the right one, is evident not merely 
from the fact that Michael Angelo plays with his 
name, as Shakespeare plays With the name of Willie 
Hughes, but from the direct evidence of Varchi, 
who was well acquainted with the young man, 
arid who, indeed, tells us that he possessed "besides 
incomparable personal beauty, so much charm of 
nature, such excellent abilities, and such a graceful 
manner, that he deserved, and still deserves, to be 
the better loved the more he is known." 1 Strange 
as these sonnets may seem to us now, when rightly 
interpreted they merely serve to show with what 
intense and religious fervour Michael Angelo ad' 
dressed himself to the worship of intellectual beau' 
ty, and how, to borrow a fine phrase from Mr Sym' 
onds, he pierced through the veil of flesh and sought 
the divine idea it imprisoned. In the sonnet writ' 



64 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

ten for Luigi del Riccio on the death of his friend, 
Cecchino Bracci, we can also trace, as Mr Symonds 
points out, the Platonic conception of love as noth' 
ing if not spiritual, and of beauty as a form that finds 
its immortality within the lover's soul. Cecchino 
was a lad who died at the age of seventeen, and 
when Luigi asked Michael Angelo to make a por* 
trait of him, Michael Angelo answered, "I can only 
do so by drawing you in whom he still lives." 

"If the beloved in the lover shine, 
Since Art without him cannot work alone, 
Thee must I carve, to tell the world of him." 

The same idea is also put forward in Montaigne s 
noble essay on Friendship, a passion which he ranks 
higher than the love of brother for brother, or the 
love of man for woman. He tells us — I quote from 
Florio's translation, one of the books with which 
Shakespeare was familiar — how "perfect amitie" is 
indivisible, how it "possesseth the soule, and swaies 
it in all soveraigntie,"and how "by the interposition 
of a spiritual beauty the desire of a spiritual con- 
ception is engendered in the beloved." He writes 
of an "internall beauty, of difficile knowledge, and 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 65 

abstruse discovery" that is revealed unto friends, 
and unto friends only. He mourns for the dead 
Etienne de la Boetie, in accents of wild grief and 
inconsolable love. The learned Hubert Languet, 
the friend of Melanchthon and of the leaders of the 
reformed church, tells the young Philip Sidney 
how he kept his portrait by him some hours to feast 
his eyes upon it, and how his appetite was "rather 
increased than diminished by the sight," and Sidney 
writes to him, "the chief hope of my life, next to 
the everlasting blessedness of heaven, will always 
be the enjoyment of true friendship, and there you 
shall have the chiefest place." Later on there came 
to Sidney's house in London, one — some day to be 
burned at Rome, for the sin of seeing God in all 
things— Giordano Bruno,just fresh from his triumph 
before the University of Paris. "A filosofia e neces' 
sario amore" were the words ever upon his lips, 
and there was something in his strange ardent per" 
sonality that made men feel that he had discovered 
the new secret of life. Ben Jonson writing to one 
of his friends subscribes himself "your true lover," 
and dedicates his noble eulogy on Shakespeare "To 



66 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

the memory of my Beloved." Richard Barnfield in 
his "Affectionate Shepherd" flutes on soft Virgilian 
reed the story of his attachment to some young 
Elizabethan of the day. Out of all the Eclogues, 
Abraham Fraunce selects the second for transla' 
tion, and Fletchers lines to Master W. C. show 
what fascination was hidden in the mere name of 
Alexis. 

It was no wonder then that Shakespeare had 
been stirred by a spirit that so stirred his age. There 
had been critics, like Hallam, who had regretted 
that the Sonnets had ever been written, who had 
seen in them something dangerous, something un' 
lawful even. To them it would have been sufficient 
to answer in Chapman's noble words: 

"There is no danger to a man that knows 
What Life and Death is : there's not any law 
Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful 
That he should stoop to any other law." 

But it was evident that the Sonnets needed no such 
defence as this, and that those who had talked of 
"the folly of excessive and misplaced affection" had 
not been able to interpret either the language or 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 67 

the spirit of these great poems, so intimately con' 
nected with the philosophy and the art of their 
time. It is no doubt true that to be filled with an 
absorbing passion is to surrender the security of 
one's lover life, and yet in such surrender there may 
be gain, certainly there was for Shakespeare. When 
Pico della Mirandola crossed the threshold of the 
villa of Careggi, and stood before Marsilio Ficino 
in all the grace and comeliness of his wonderful 
youth, the aged scholar seemed to see in him the 
realisation of the Greek ideal, and determined 
to devote his remaining years to the translation of 
Plotinus, that new Plato, in whom, as Mr Pater 
reminds us, "the mystical element in the Platonic 
philosophy had been worked out to the utmost 
limit of vision and ecstasy." A romantic friendship 
with a young Roman of his day initiated Winckel- 
mann into the secret of Greek art, taught him the 
mystery of its beauty and the meaning of its form. 
In Willie Hughes, Shakespeare found not merely a 
most delicate instrument for the presentation of his 
art, but the visible incarnation of his idea of beauty, 
and it is not too much to say that to this young 



68 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

actor, whose very name the dull writers of his age 
forgot to chronicle, the Romantic Movement of 
English Literature is largely indebted. 



Ill 

One evening I thought that I had really discov 
ered Willie Hughes in Elizabethan literature. In a 
wonderfully graphic account of the last days of the 
great Earl of Essex, his chaplain, Thomas Knell, tells 
us that the night before the Earl died, "he called 
William Hewes, which was his musician, to play 
upon the virginals and to sing. 'Play,' said he, 'my 
song, Will Hewes, and I will sing it myself.' So he 
did it most joyfully, not as the howling swan, which, 
still looking down, waileth her end, but as a sweet 
lark, lifting up his hands and casting up his eyes to 
his God, with this mounted the crystal skies, and 
reached with his unwearied tongue the top of high' 
est heavens." Surely the boy who played on the 
virginals to the dying father of Sidney's Stella was 
none other than the Will Hews to whom Shake 
speare dedicated the Sonnets, and who he tells us 
was himself sweet "music to hear." Yet Lord Essex 
died in 1 576, when Shakespeare was but twelve 



70 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

* 

years of age. It was impossible that his musician 
could have been the Mr W. H. of the Sonnets. Per' 
haps Shakespeare's young friend was the son of the 
player upon the virginals? It was at least some 
thing to have discovered that Will Hews was an 
Elizabethan name. Indeed the name Hews seemed 
to have been closely connected with music and the 
stage. The first English actress was the lovely Mar' 
garet Hews, whom Prince Rupert so madly adored. 
What more probable than that between her and 
Lord Essex' musician had come the boyactor of 
Shakespeare's plays? In 1587 a certain Thomas 
Hews brought out at Gray's Inn a Euripidean trag' 
edy entitled "The Misfortunes of Arthur," receiv- 
ing much assistance in the arrangement of the dumb 
shows from one Francis Bacon, then a student of 
law. Surely he was some near kinsman of the lad 
to whom Shakespeare said — 

"Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all"; 
the "profitless usurer" of "unused beauty," as he dc 
scribes him. But the proofs, the links — where were 
they? Alas! I could not find them. It seemed to me 
that I was always on the brink of absolute verifi' 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 7 1 

cation, but that I could never really attain to it. 
I thought it strange that no one had ever written 
a history of the English boyactors of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, and determined to un- 
dertake the task myself, and to try and ascertain 
their true relations to the drama; The subject was, 
certainly, full of artistic interest. These lads had 
been the delicate reeds through which our poets 
had sounded their sweetest strains, the gracious 
vessels of honour into which they had poured the 
purple wine of their song. Foremost, naturally, 
amongst them all had been the youth to whom 
Shakespeare had intrusted the realisation of his 
most exquisite creations. Beauty had been his, such 
as our age has never, or but rarely seen, a beauty 
that seemed to combine the charm of both sexes, 
and to have wedded, as the Sonnets tell us, the 
grace of Adonis and the loveliness of Helen. He 
had been quick-witted, too, and eloquent, and from 
those finely curved lips that the satirist had mocked 
at had come the passionate cry of Juliet, and the 
bright laughter of Beatrice, Perdita's flower-like 
words, andOphekVswandering songs. Yet asShakc 



72 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

speare himself had been but as a god among giants, 
so Willie Hughes had only been one out of many 
marvellous lads to whom our English Renaissance 
owed something of the secret of its joy, and it ap' 
peared to me that they also were worthy of some 
study and record. 

In a little book with fine vellum leaves and dam' 
ask silk cover — a fancy of mine in those fanciful 
days — I accordingly collected such information as 
I could about them, and even now there is some' 
thing in the scanty record of their lives, in the mere 
mention of their names, that attracts me. I seemed 
to know them all: Robin Armin, the goldsmith's 
lad who was lured by Tarlton to go on the stage: 
Sandford, whose performance of the courtezan Fla' 
mantia Lord Burleigh witnessed at Gray's Inn: 
Cooke, who played Agrippina in the tragedy of 
"Sejanus": Nat. Field, whose young and beardless 
portrait is still preserved for us at Dulwich, and 
who in "Cynthia's Revels" played the "Queen and 
Huntress chaste and fair": Gil. Carie, who, attired 
as a mountain nymph, sang in the same lovely 
masque Echo's song of mourning for Narcissus : Par' 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 73 

sons, the Salmacis of the strange pageant of "Tam* 
burlaine": Will. Ostler, who was one of "The Chil' 
dren of the Queen's Chapel," and accompanied King 
James to Scotland: George Vernon, to whom the 
King sent a cloak of scarlet cloth, and a cape of 
crimson velvet: Alick Gough, who performed the 
part of Camis, Vespasian's concubine, in Massin' 
ger's "Roman Actor," and three years later that of 
Acanthe, in the same dramatist's "Picture": Barrett, 
the heroine of Richards' tragedy of "Messalina": 
Dicky Robinson, "a very pretty fellow," Ben Jon' 
son tells us, who was a member of Shakespeare's 
company, and was known for his exquisite taste in 
costume, as well as for his love of woman's apparel: 
Salathiel Pavy, whose early and tragic death Jon- 
son mourned in one of the sweetest threnodies of 
our literature : Arthur Savile, who was one of "the 
players of Prince Charles," and took a girl's part in 
a comedy by Marmion: Stephen Hammerton, "a 
most noted and beautiful woman actor," whose pale 
oval face with its heavy 'lidded eyes and somewhat 
sensuous mouth looks out at us from a curious min' 
iature of the time: Hart, who made his first success 



74 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

by playing the Duchess in the tragedy of " The Car' 
dinal," and who in a poem that is clearly modelled 
upon some of Shakespeare's Sonnets is described 
by one who had seen him as "beauty to the eye, 
and music to the ear": and Kynaston, of whom 
Betterton said that "it has been disputed among 
the judicious, whether any woman could have 
more sensibly touched the passions," and whose 
white hands and amber'coloured hair seem to have 
retarded by some years the introduction of ac 
tresses upon our stage. 

The Puritans, with their uncouth morals and 
ignoble minds, had of course railed against them, 
and dwelt on the impropriety of boys disguising as 
women, and learning to affect the manners and pas' 
sions of the female sex. Gosson, with his shrill voice, 
and Prynne, soon to be made earless for many 
shameful slanders, and others to whom the rare and 
subtle sense of abstract beauty was denied, had 
from pulpit and through pamphlet said foul or fool' 
ish things to their dishonour. To Francis Lenton, 
writing in 1629, what he speaks of as— 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 75 

"loose action, mimic gesture 
By a poor boy clad in a princely vesture," 

is but one of the many — 

"tempting baits of hell 
Which draw more youth unto the damned cell 
Of furious lust, than all the devil could do 
Since he obtained his first overthrow. 1 ' 

Deuteronomy was quoted and the ill-digested learn- 
ing of the period laid under contribution. Even our 
own time had not appreciated the artistic condi- 
tions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. One 
of the most brilliant and intellectual actresses of 
this century had laughed at the idea of a lad of 
seventeen or eighteen playing Imogen, or Miranda, 
or Rosalind. "How could any youth, however 
gifted and specially trained, even faintly suggest 
these fair and noble women to an audience? . . . 
One quite pities Shakespeare, who had to put up 
with seeing his brightest creations marred, misrep- 
resented, and spoiled." In his book on "Shakespeare's 
Predecessors" Mr John Addington Symonds also 
had talked of "hobbledehoys" trying to represent 
the pathos of Desdemona and Juliet's passion. Were 



76 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

they right? Are they right? I did not think so then. 
I do not think so now. Those who remember 
the Oxford production of the "Agamemnon," the 
fine utterance and marble dignity of the Clytemnes- 
tra, the romantic and imaginative rendering of the 
prophetic madness of Cassandra, will not agree with 
Lady Martin or Mr Symonds in their strictures on 
the condition of the Elizabethan stage. 

Of all the motives of dramatic curiosity used by 
our great playwrights, there is none more subtle or 
more fascinating than the ambiguity of the sexes. 
This idea, invented, as far as an artistic idea can be 
said to be invented, by Lyly, perfected and made ex- 
quisite for us by Shakespeare, seems to me to owe 
its origin, as it certainly owes its possibility of life- 
like presentation, to the circumstance that the Eliza- 
bethan stage, like the stage of the Greeks, admitted 
the appearance of no female performers. It is because 
Lyly was writing for the boy-actors of St. Paul's that 
we have the confused sexes and complicated loves 
of Phillida and Gallathea: it is because Shakespeare 
was writing for Willie Hughes that Rosalind dons 
doublet and hose, and calls herself Ganymede, that 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 77 

Viola and Julia put on pages' dress, that Imogen 
steals away in male attire. To say that only a worn' 
an can portray the passions of a woman, and that 
therefore no boy can play Rosalind, is to rob the 
art of acting of all claim to objectivity, and to assign 
to the mere accident of sex what properly belongs 
to imaginative insight and creative energy. Indeed, 
if sex be an element in artistic creation, it might 
rather be urged that the delightful combination of 
wit and romance which characterises so many of 
Shakespeare's heroines was at least occasioned if it 
was not actually caused by the fact that the players 
of these parts were lads and young men, whose 
passionate purity, quick mobile fancy, and healthy 
freedom from sentimentality can hardly fail to have 
suggested a new and delightful type of girlhood or 
of womanhood. The very difference of sex between 
the player and the part he represented must also, as 
Professor Ward points out, have constituted "one 
more demand upon the imaginative capacities of 
the spectators," and must have kept them from that 
over-realistic identification of the actor with his role, 



78 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

which is one of the weak points in modern theatri- 
cal criticism. 

This, too, must be granted, that it was to these 
boy-actors that we owe the introduction of those 
lovely lyrics that star the plays of Shakespeare, 
Dekker, and so many of the dramatists of the period, 
those "snatches of bird-like or god-like song," as Mr 
Swinburne calls them. For it was out of the choirs 
of the cathedrals and royal chapels of England that 
most of these lads came, and from their earliest 
years they had been trained in the singing of an- 
thems and madrigals, and in all that concerns the 
subtle art of music. Chosen at first for the beauty 
of their voices, as well as for a certain comeliness 
and freshness of appearance, they were then in- 
structed in gesture, dancing, and elocution, and 
taught to play both tragedies and comedies in the 
English as well as in the Latin language. Indeed, 
acting seems to have formed part of the ordinary 
education of the time, and to have been much stud- 
ied not merely by the scholars of Eton and West- 
minster, but also by the students at the Universities 
of Oxford and Cambridge, some of whom went af- 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 79 

terwards upon the public stage, as is becoming not 
uncommon in our own day. The great actors, too, 
had their pupils and apprentices, who were form- 
ally bound over to them by legal warrant, to whom 
they imparted the secrets of their craft, and who 
were so much valued that we read of Henslowe, 
one of the managers of the Rose Theatre, buying a 
trained boy of the name of James Bristowe for eight 
pieces of gold. The relations that existed between 
the masters and their pupils seem to have been of 
the most cordial and affectionate character. Robin 
Armin was looked upon by Tarlton as his adopted 
son, and in a will dated "the fourth daie ofMaie, anno 
Domini 1605," Augustine Phillips, Shakespeare's 
dear friend and fellow-actor, bequeathed to one of 
his apprentices his "purple cloke, sword, and dag- 
ger," his "base viall," and much rich apparel, and to 
another a sum of money and many beautiful instru- 
ments of music, "to be delivered unto him at the 
expiration of his terme of yeres in his indenture of 
apprenticehood." Now and then, when some dar- 
ing actor kidnapped a boy for the stage, there was 
an outcry or an investigation. In 1600, for instance, 



80 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

a certain Norfolk gentleman of the name of Henry 
Clifton came to live in London in order that his 
son, then about thirteen years of age, might have 
the opportunity of attending the Bluecoat School, 
and from a petition which he presented to the Star 
Chamber, and which has been recently brought to 
light by Mr Greenstreet, we learn that as the boy 
was walking quietly to Christ Church cloister one 
winter morning he was waylaid by James Robin- 
son, Henry Evans, and Nathaniel Giles, and carried 
off to theBlackfriarsTheatre/'amongste a companie 
of lewde and dissolute mercenarie players," as his 
father calls them, in order that he might be trained 
"in acting of parts in base playes and enterludes." 
Hearing of his son's misadventure, Mr Clifton went 
down at once to the theatre, and demanded his sur- 
render, but "the sayd Nathaniel Giles, James Rob' 
inson and Henry Evans most arrogantlie then and 
there answered that they had authoritie sufficient 
soe to take any noble man's sonne in this land," and 
handing the young schoolboy "a scrolle of paper, 
conteyning parte of one of their said playes and 
enterludes," commanded him to learn it by heart. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 8 1 

Through a warrant issued by Sir John Fortescue, 
however, the boy was restored to his father the 
next day, and the Court of Star Chamber seems to 
have suspended or cancelled Evans' privileges. 

The fact is that, following a precedent set by 
Richard III, Elisabeth had issued a commission au- 
thorising certain persons to impress into her service 
all boys who had beautiful voices that they might 
sing for her in her Chapel Royal, and Nathaniel 
Giles, her Chief Commissioner, finding that he 
could deal profitably with the managers of the 
Globe Theatre, agreed to supply them with per- 
sonable and graceful lads for the playing of female 
parts, under colour of taking them for the Queen's 
service. The actors, accordingly, had a certain 
amount of legal warrant on their side, and it is in- 
teresting to note that many of the boys whom they 
carried offfrom their schools or homes, such as Sala- 
thiel Pavy, Nat. Field, and Alvery Trussell, became 
so fascinated by their new art that they attached 
themselves permanently to the theatre, and would 
not leave it. 

Once it seemed as if girls were to take the place 



82 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

of boys upon the stage, and among the christenings 
chronicled in the registers of St. Giles', Cripplegate, 
occurs the following strange and suggestive entry: 
"Comedia, bascborn, daughter of Alice Bowker 
and William Johnson, one of the Queen s plaiers, 
10 Feb. 1 589." But the child upon whom such high 
hopes had been built died at six years of age, and 
when, later on, some French actresses came over 
and played at Blackfriars, we learn that they were 
"hissed, hooted, and pippin'pelted from the stage." 
I think that, from what I have said above, we need 
not regret this in any way. The essentially male- 
culture of the English Renaissance found its fullest 
and most perfect expression by its own method, 
and in its own manner. 

I remember I used to wonder, at this time, what 
had been the social position and early life of Willie 
Hughes before Shakespeare had met with him. My 
investigations into the history of the boy 'actors had 
made me curious of every detail about him. Had he 
stood in the carved stall of some gilded choir, read' 
ing out of a great book painted with square scarlet 
notes and long black key^ines? We know from the 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 83 

Sonnets how clear and pure his voice was, and what 
skill he had in the art of music. Noble gentlemen, 
such as the Earl of Leicester and Lord Oxford, had 
companies of boy-players in their service as part 
of their household. When Leicester went to the 
Netherlands in 1585 he brought with him a cer- 
tain "Will" described as a "plaier." Was this Willie 
Hughes? Had he acted for Leicester at Kenilworth, 
and was it there that Shakespeare had first known 
him? Or was he, like Robin Armin, simply a lad of 
low degree, but possessing some strange beauty and 
marvellous fascination? It was evident from the 
early sonnets that when Shakespeare first came 
across him he had no connection whatsoever with 
the stage, and that he was not of high birth has al- 
ready been shewn. I began to think of him not as 
the delicate chorister of a Royal Chapel, not as a 
petted minion trained to sing and dance in Leices' 
ters stately masque, but as some fair-haired English 
lad whom in one of London's hurrying streets, or 
on Windsor's green silent meadows, Shakespeare 
had seen and followed, recognising the artistic pos' 
sibilities that lay hidden in so comely and gracious 



84 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

a form, and divining by a quick and subtle instinct 
what an actor the lad would make could he be in' 
duced to go upon the stage. At this time Willie 
Hughes' father was dead, as we learn from Son' 
net XIII, and his mother, whose remarkable beauty- 
he is said to have inherited, may have been induced 
to allow him to become Shakespeare's apprentice 
by the fact that boys who played female characters 
were paid extremely large salaries, larger salaries, in' 
deed, than were given to grown'Up actors. Shake' 
speare's apprentice, at any rate, we know that he 
became, and we know what a vital factor he was 
in the development of Shakespeare's art. As a rule, 
a boyactor's capacity for representing girlish parts 
on the stage lasted but for a few years at most. Such 
characters as Lady Macbeth, Queen Constance and 
Volumnia, remained of course always within the 
reach of those who had true dramatic genius and 
noble presence. Absolute youth was not necessary 
here, not desirable even. But with Imogen, and Per' 
dita, and Juliet, it was different. "Your beard has 
begun to grow, and I pray God your voice be not 
cracked" says Hamlet mockingly to the boyactor 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 85 

of the strolling company that came to visit him at 
Elsinore; and certainly when chins grew rough and 
voices harsh much of the charm and grace of the 
performance must have gone. Hence comes Shake' 
speare's passionate preoccupation with the youth 
of Willie Hughes, his terror of old age and wasting 
years, his wild appeal to time to spare the beauty 
of his friend: 

"Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st, 
And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed time, 
To the wide world and all her fading sweets; 
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime: 
O carve not with thy hours my Love's fair brow 
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; 
Him in thy course untainted do allow 
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men." 

Time seems to have listened to Shakespeare's 
prayers, or perhaps Willie Hughes had the secret 
of perpetual youth. After three years he is quite 
unchanged: 

"To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
For as you were when first your eye I eyed, 
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters' cold 



86 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

Have from the forests shook three summers' 

pride, 
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn 

turned, 
In process of the seasons have I seen, 
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned, 
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green." 

More years pass over, and the bloom of his boyhood 
seems to be still with him. When, in "The Tempest," 
Shakespeare, through the lips of Prospero, flung 
away the wand of his imagination and gave his pc 
etic sovereignty into the weak, graceful hands of 
Fletcher, it may be that the Miranda who stood 
wondering by was none other than Willie Hughes 
himself, and in the last sonnet that his friend ad' 
dressed to him, the enemy that is feared is not Time 
but Death. 

"O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power 
Dost hold time's fickle glass, his sickle hour; 
Who hast by waning grown, and therein 

show'st 
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self grow'st; 
If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 87 

As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, 
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill 
May Time disgrace and wretched minutes kill. 
Yet fear her, O thou minion of her pleasure! 
She may detain, but not still keep, her treasure. 
Her audit, though delay'd, answerd must be, 
And her quietus is to render thee." 



IV 

It was not for some weeks after I had begun my 
study of the subject that I ventured to approach 
the curious group of Sonnets (CXXVII-CLII) 
that deal with the dark woman who, like a shadow 
or thing of evil omen, came across Shakespeare's 
great romance, and for a season stood between him 
and Willie Hughes. They were obviously printed 
out of their proper place and should have been in' 
serted between Sonnets XXXIII and XL. Psycho- 
logical and artistic reasons necessitated this change, 
a change which I hope will be adopted by all future 
editors, as without it an entirely false impression is 
conveyed of the nature and final issue of this noble 
friendship. 

Who was she, this black-browed, olive'skinned 
woman, with her amorous mouth "that Love's own 
hand didmake, 1, her "cruel eye," and her "foul pride," 
her strange skill on the virginals and her false, fasci- 
nating nature? An over-curious scholar of our day 
had seen in her a symbol of the Catholic Church, 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 89 

of that Bride of Christ who is "black but comely." 
Professor Minto, following in the footsteps of 
Henry Brown, had regarded the whole group of 
Sonnets as simply "exercises of skill undertaken in a 
spirit of wanton defiance and derision of the com- 
monplace." Mr Gerald Massey, without any histor- 
ical proof or probability, had insisted that they were 
addressed to the celebrated Lady Rich, the Stella of 
Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets, the Philoclea of his "Ar- 
cadia," and that they contained no personal revela- 
tion of Shakespeare's life and love, having been 
written in Lord Pembroke's name and at his re- 
quest. Mr Tyler had suggested that they referred 
to one of Queen Elisabeth's maids-of-honour, by 
name Mary Fitton. But none of these explanations 
satisfied the conditions of the problem. The woman 
that came between Shakespeare and Willie Hughes 
was a real woman, black-haired, and married, and 
of evil repute. Lady Rich's fame was evil enough, 
it is true, but her hair was of — 

. . "fine threads of finest gold, 
In curled knots man's thought to hold," 

and her shoulders like "white doves perching." She 



90 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

was, as King James said to her lover, Lord Mount' 
joy," a fair woman with a black soul." As for Mary 
Fitton, we know that she was unmarried in 1601, 
the time when her amour with Lord Pembroke was 
discovered, and besides, any theories that connected 
Lord Pembroke with the Sonnets were, as Cyril 
Graham had shewn, put entirely out of court by the 
fact that Lord Pembroke did not come to London 
till they had been actually written and read by 
Shakespeare to his friends. 

It was not, however, her name that interested 
me. I was content to hold with Professor Dowden 
that "To the eyes of no diver among the wrecks 
of time will that curious talisman gleam. ,, What I 
wanted to discover was the nature of her influence 
over Shakespeare, as well as the characteristics of 
her personality. Two things were certain: she was 
much older than the poet, and the fascination that 
she exercised over him was at first purely intellect 
tual. He began by feeling no physical passion for 
her. "I do not love thee with mine eyes," he says: 

"Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune 
delighted; 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 9 1 

Nor tender feeling to base touches prone, 
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited 
To any sensual feast with thee alone." 

He did not even think her beautiful: 

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; 
Coral is far more red than her lips 1 red: 
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; 
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her 
head." 

He has his moments of loathing for her, for, not con' 
tent with enslaving the soul of Shakespeare, she 
seems to have sought to snare the senses of Willie 
Hughes. Then Shakespeare cries aloud, — 

"Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 
Which like two spirits do suggest me still: 
The better angel is a man right fair, 
The worser spirit a woman colourd ill. 
To win me soon to hell, my female evil 
Tempteth my better angel from my side, 
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, 
Wooing his purity with her foul pride." 

Then he sees her as she really is, the "bay where all 
men ride," the "wide world's common place," the 
woman who is in the" very refuse" of her evil deeds, 



92 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

and who is "as black as hell, as dark as night." Then 
it is that he pens that great sonnet upon Lust ("Th* 
expense of spirit in a waste of shame"), of which 
Mr Theodore Watts says rightly that it is the great' 
est sonnet ever written. And it is then, also, that he 
offers to mortgage his very life and genius to her if 
she will but restore to him that "sweetest friend" 
of whom she had robbed him. 

To compass this end he abandons himself to her, 
feigns to be full of an absorbing and sensuous pas- 
sion of possession, forges false words of love, lies to 
her, and tells her that he lies. 

" My thoughts and my discourse as madmens are, 
At random from the truth vainly express'd; 
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee 

bright, 
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night." 

Rather than suffer his friend to be treacherous to 
him, he will himself be treacherous to his friend. 
To shield his purity, he will himself be vile. He 
knew the weakness of the boy-actor's nature, his 
susceptibility to praise, his inordinate love of admi- 
ration, and deliberately set himself to fascinate the 
woman who had come between them. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 93 

It is never with impunity that one's lips say 
Love's Litany. Words have their mystical power 
over the soul, and form can create the feeling from 
which it should have sprung. Sincerity itself, the 
ardent, momentary sincerity of the artist, is often 
the unconscious result of style, and in the case of 
those rare temperaments that are exquisitely sus' 
ceptible to the influences of language, the use of cer- 
tain phrases and modes of expression can stir the 
very pulse of passion, can send the red blood cours- 
ing through the veins, and can transform into a 
strange sensuous energy what in its origin had been 
mere aesthetic impulse, and desire of art. So, at least, 
it seems to have been with Shakespeare. He begins 
by pretending to love, wears a lover's apparel and 
has a lovers words upon his lips. What does it 
matter? It is only acting, only a comedy in real life. 
Suddenly he finds that what his tongue had spoken 
his soul had listened to, and that the raiment that 
he had put on for disguise is a plague-stricken and 
poisonous thing that eats into his flesh, and that he 
cannot throw away. Then comes Desire, with its 
many maladies, and Lust that makes one love all that 



94 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

one loathes, and Shame, with its ashen face and 

secret smile. He is enthralled by this dark woman, 

is for a season separated from his friend, and be' 

comes the " vassal-wretch" of one whom he knows 

to be evil and perverse and unworthy of his love, 

as of the love of Willie Hughes. "O, from what 

power," he says, — 

"hast thou this powerful might, 
With insufficiency my heart to sway? 
To make me give the lie to my true sight, 
And swear that brightness does not grace the 

day? 
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, 
That in the very refuse of thy deeds 
There is such strength and warrantise of skill 
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?" 

He is keenly conscious of his own degradation, and 
finally, realising that his genius is nothing to her 
compared to the physical beauty of the young ac- 
tor, he cuts with a quick knife the bond that binds 
him to her, and in this bitter sonnet bids her fare- 
well:— 

"In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn, 
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love 
swearing; 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 95 

In act thy bed'Vow broke, and new faith torn, 
In vowing new hate after new love bearing. 
But why of two oaths 1 breach do I accuse 

thee, 
When I break twenty? I am perjur'd most; 
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee, 
And all my honest faith in thee is lost: 
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep 

kindness, 
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy; 
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness, 
Or made them swear against the thing they 

see; 
For I have sworn thee fair; more perjurd I, 
To swear against the truth so foul a lie!" 

His attitude towards Willie Hughes in the whole 
matter shews at once the fervour and the self-abne' 
gation of the great love he bore him. There is a poig' 
nant touch of pathos in the close of this sonnet: 

"Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, 
When I am sometime absent from thy heart, 
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits, 
For still temptation follows where thou art. 
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, 
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed; 



96 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

And when a woman woos, what woman's son 
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed? 
Ay me ! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, 
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, 
Who lead thee in their riot even there 
Where thou art forcd to break a two-fold 

truth, — 
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee, 
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me." 

But here he makes it manifest that his forgiveness 
was full and complete: 

"No more be griev'd at that which thou 

hast done: 

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; 

Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, 

And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. 

All men make faults, and even I in this, 

Authorising thy trespass with compare, 

Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss, 

Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are; 

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense, — 

Thy adverse party is thy advocate, — 

And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence: 

Such civil war is in my love and hate, 

That I an accessary needs must be 

To that sweet thief which sourly robs from 
it 
me. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 97 

Shortly afterwards Shakespeare left London' for 
Stratford (Sonnets XLIII-LII), and when he re 
turned Willie Hughes seems to have grown tired 
of the woman who for a little time had fascinated 
him. Her name is never mentioned again in the Son' 
nets, nor is there any allusion made to her. She had 
passed out of their lives. 

But who was she? And, even if her name has 
not come down to us, were there any allusions to 
her in contemporary literature? It seems to me that 
although better educated than most of the women 
of her time, she was not nobly born, but was prob' 
ably the profligate wife of some old and wealthy 
citizen. We know that women of this class, which 
•was then first rising into social prominence, were 
strangely fascinated by the new art of stage play 
ing. They were to be found almost every afternoon 
at the theatre, when dramatic performances were 
being given, and "The Actors' Remonstrance 1 ' is 
eloquent on the subject of their amours with the 
young actors. 

Cranley in his ' 'Amanda" tells us of one who loved 
to mimic the actors disguises, appearing one day 



98 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

"embroidered, laced, perfumed, in glittering show 
... as brave as any Countess," and the next day, 
"all in mourning, black and sad," now in the grey 
cloak of a country wench, and now "in the neat 
habit of a citizen." She was a curious woman, "more 
changeable and wavering than the moon," and the 
books that she loved to read were Shakespeare's 
"Venus and Adonis," Beaumont's "Salmacis and 
Hermaphroditus," amorous pamphlets, and "songs 
of love and sonnets exquisite." These sonnets, that 
were to her the " bookes of her devotion" were surely 
none other but Shakespeare's own, for the whole 
description reads like the portrait of the woman who 
fell in love with Willie Hughes, and, lest we should 
have any doubt on the subject, Cranley, borrow 
ing Shakespeare's play on words, tells us that, in 
her "proteus'like strange shapes," she is one who — 
"Changes hews with the chameleon." 
Manningham's Table-book, also, contains a clear 
allusion to the same story. Manningham was a stu' 
dent at the Middle Temple with Sir Thomas Over- 
bury and Edmund Curie, whose chambers he seems 
to have shared; and his Diary is still preserved among 

V 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 99 

the Harleian MSS. at the British Museum, a small 
duodecimo book written in a fair and tolerably leg' 
ible hand, and containing many unpublished anec 
dotes about Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, Spen' 
ser, Ben Jonson and others. The dates, which are in' 
serted with much care, extend from January 1 600-1 
to April 1603, and under the heading "March 13, 
1601," Manningham tells us that he heard from a 
member of Shakespeare's company that a certain 
citizen's wife being at the Globe Theatre one after' 
noon, fell in love with one of the actors, and "grew 
so farre in liking with him, that before shee went 
from the play shee appointed him to come that night 
unto hir, 1, but that Shakespeare "overhearing their 
conclusion" anticipated his friend and came first to 
the lady's house," went before and was entertained," 
as Manningham puts it, with some added looseness 
of speech which it is unnecessary to quote. 

It seemed to me that we had here a common and 
distorted version of the story that is revealed to us 
in the Sonnets, the story of the dark woman's love 
for Willie Hughes, and Shakespeare's mad attempt 
to make her love him in his "friend's stead. It was 



IOO THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

not, of course, necessary to accept it as absolutely- 
true in every detail. According to Manningham's 
informant, for instance, the name of the actor in 
question was not Willie Hughes, but Richard Bur- 
bage. Tavern gossip, however, is proverbially in' 
accurate, and Burbage was, no doubt, dragged into 
the story to give point to the foolish jest about 
William the Conqueror and Richard the Third, 
with which the entry in Manningham's Diary ends. 
Burbage was our first great tragic actor, but it needed 
all his genius to counterbalance the physical defects 
of low stature and corpulent figure under which 
he laboured, and he was not the sort of man who 
would have fascinated the dark woman of the Son- 
nets, or would have cared to be fascinated by her. 
There was no doubt that Willie Hughes was re- 
ferred to, and the private diary of a young law stu- 
dent of the time thus curiously corroborated Cyril 
Graham's wonderful guess at the secret of Shake' 
speare's great romance. Indeed, when taken in con- 
junction with "Amanda, 11 Manningham's Table- 
book seemed to me to be an extremely strong link 
in the chain of evidence, and to place the new in- 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. IOI 

terpretation of the Sonnets on something like a se- 
cure historic basis, the fact that Cranley 's poem was 
not published till after Shakespeare's death being 
really rather in favour of this view, as it was not 
likely that he would have ventured during the life' 
time of the great dramatist to revive the memory 
of this tragic and bitter story. 

This passion for the dark lady also enabled me 
to fix with still greater certainty the date of the 
Sonnets. From internal evidence, from the char- 
acteristics of language, style, and the like, it was 
evident that they belonged to Shakespeare's early 
period, the period of "Love's Labour's Lost" and 
"Venus and Adonis." With the play, indeed, they 
are intimately connected. They display the same del- 
icate euphuism, the same delight in fanciful phrase 
and curious expression, the artistic wilfulness and 
studied graces of the same "fair tongue, conceit's 
expositor." Rosaline, the — 
"whitely wanton with a velvet brow, 

With two pitch'balls stuck in her face for eyes," 

who is born "to make black fair," and whose "fa- 
vour turns the fashion of the days," is the dark lady 



102 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

of the Sonnets who makes black "beauty's succes- 
sive heir." In the comedy as well as in the poems 
we have that half-sensuous philosophy that exalts 
the judgment of the senses "above all slower, more 
toilsome means of knowledge,' ' and Berowne is per- 
haps, as Mr Pater suggests, a reflex of Shakespeare 
himself "when he has just become able to stand 
aside from and estimate the first period of his poetry?' 

Now though "Love's Labour's Lost" was not pub- 
lished till 1 598, when it wasbroughtout"newlie cor- 
rected and augmented" by Cuthbert Burby, there is 
no doubt that it was written and produced on the 
stage at a much earlier date, probably, as Professor 
Dowden points out, in 1588-9. If this be so, it is 
clear that Shakespeare's first meeting with Willie 
Hughes must have been in 1585, and it is just pos- 
sible that this young actor may, after all, have been 
in his boyhood the musician of Lord Essex. 

It is clear, at any rate, that Shakespeare's love for 
the dark lady must have passed away before 1 594. 
In this year there appeared, under the editorship of 
Hadrian Dorell, that fascinating poem, or series of 
poems, "Willobie his Avisa," which is described by 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. IOJ 

Mr Swinburne as the one contemporary book 
which has been supposed to throw any direct or 
indirect light on the mystic matter of the Sonnets. 
In it we learn how a young gentleman of St. Johns 
College, Oxford, by name Henry Willobie, fell in 
love with a woman so " fair and chaste" that he called 
her Avisa, either because such beauty as hers had 
never been seen, or because she fled like a bird from 
the snare of his passion, and spread her wings for 
flight when he ventured but to touch her hand. 
Anxious to win his mistress he consults his famil' 
iar friend W. S.," who not long before had tried the 
curtesy of the like passion, and was now newly re 
covered of the like infection." Shakespeare encoup 
ages him in the siege that he is laying to the Castle of 
Beauty, telling him that every woman is to be wooed, 
and every woman to be won; views this "loving 
comedy" from far off, in order to see "whether it 
would sort to a happier end for this new actor than 
it did for the old player," and "enlargeth the wound 
with the sharperasor of a willing conceit," feeling the, 
purely ssthetic interest of the artist in the moods 
and emotions of others. It is unnecessary, however, 



104 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

to enter more fully into this curious passage in Shake' 
speare's life, as all that I wanted to point out was 
that in 1 594 he had been cured of his infatuation for 
the dark lady, and had already been acquainted for 
at least three years with Willie Hughes. 

My whole scheme of the Sonnets was now com' 
plete, and, by placing those that refer to the dark 
lady in their proper order and position, I saw the 
perfect unity and completeness of the whole. The 
drama — for indeed they formed a drama and a soul's 
tragedy of fiery passion and of noble thought — is 
divided into four scenes or acts. In the first of these 
( Sonnets I-XXXII ) Shakespeare invites Willie 
Hughes to go upon the stage as an actor, and to put 
to the service of Art his wonderful physical beauty, 
and his exquisite grace of youth, before passion has 
robbed him of the one, and time taken from him the 
other. Willie Hughes, after a time, consents to be a 
player in Shakespeare's company, and soon becomes 
the very centre and keynote of his inspiration. Sud' 
denly, in one red'rose July (Sonnets XXXIII-LII, 
LXI, and CXXVII-CLII) there comes to the Globe 
Theatre a dark woman with wonderful eyes, who 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. I05 

falls passionately in love with Willie Hughes. 
Shakespeare, sick with the malady of jealousy, and 
made mad by many doubts and fears, tries to fasci' 
nate the woman who had come between him and 
his friend. The love, that is at first feigned, becomes 
real, and he finds himself enthralled and dominated 
by a woman whom he knows to be evil and un' 
worthy. To her the genius of a man is as nothing 
compared to a boy's beauty. Willie Hughes be' 
comes for a time her slave and the toy of her fancy, 
and the second act ends with Shakespeare's depart' 
ure from London. In the third act her influence 
has passed away. Shakespeare returns to London, 
and renews his friendship with Willie Hughes, to 
whom he promises immortality in his plays. Mar' 
lowe, hearing of the wonder and grace of the young 
actor, lures him away from the Globe Theatre to 
play Gaveston in the tragedy of "Edward II," and for 
the second time Shakespeare is separated from his 
friend. The last act (Sonnets C-CXXVI) tells 
us of the return of Willie Hughes to Shakespeare's 
company. Evil rumour had now stained the white 
purity of his name, but Shakespeare's love still en' 



106 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

dures and is perfect. Of the mystery of this love, 
and of the mystery of passion, we are told strange 
and marvellous things, and the Sonnets conclude 
with an envoi of twelve lines, whose motive is the 
triumph of Beauty over Time, and of Death over 
Beauty. 

And what had been the end of him who had 
been so dear to the soul of Shakespeare, and who 
by his presence and passion had given reality to 
Shakespeare's art? When the Civil War broke out, 
the English actors took the side of their king, and 
many of them, like Robinson foully slain by Major 
Harrison at the taking of Basing House, laid down 
their lives in the king's service. Perhaps on the 
trampled heath of Marston, or on the bleak hills of 
Naseby, the dead body of Willie Hughes had been 
found by some of the rough peasants of the district, 
his gold hair "dabbled with blood, 11 and his breast 
pierced with many wounds. Or it may be that the 
Plague, which was very frequent in London at the 
beginning of the seventeenth century, and was in' 
deed regarded by many of the Christians as a judg' 
ment sent on the city for its love of "vaine plaies 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 107 

and idolatrous shewes," had touched the lad while 
he was acting, and he had crept home to his lodging 
to die there alone, Shakespeare being far away at 
Stratford, and those who had flocked in such nunv 
bers to see him, the "gazers" whom, as the Sonnets 
tell us, he had " led astray," being too much afraid of 
contagion to come near him. A story of this kind 
was current at the time about a young actor, and 
was made much use of by the Puritans in their at- 
tempts to stifle the free development of the English 
Renaissance. Yet, surely, had this actor been Willie 
Hughes, tidings of his tragic death would have been 
speedily brought to Shakespeare as he lay dream- 
ing under the mulberry tree in his garden at New 
Place, and in an elegy as sweet as that written by 
Milton on Edward King, he would have mourned 
for the lad who had brought such joy and sorrow 
into his life, and whose connection with his art had 
been of so vital and intimate a character. Some- 
thing made me feel certain that Willie Hughes had 
survived Shakespeare, and had fulfilled in some 
measure the high prophecies the poet had made 
about him, and one evening the true secret of his 
end flashed across me. 



108 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

He had been one of those English actors who in 
161 1, the year of Shakespeare's retirement from the 
stage, went across sea to Germany and played be- 
fore the great Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick, 
himself a dramatist of no mean order, and at the 
Court of that strange Elector of Brandenburg, who 
was so enamoured of beauty that he was said to 
have bought for his weight in amber the young son 
of a travelling Greek merchant, and to have given 
pageants in honour of his slave all through that 
dreadful famine year of 1606-7, when the people 
died of hunger in the very streets of the town, and 
for the space of seven months there was no rain. 
The Library at Cassel contains to the present day a 
copy of the first edition of Marlowe's "Edward II," 
the only copy in existence, Mr Bullen tells us. Who 
could have brought it to that town, but he who had 
created the part of the king's minion, and for whom 
indeed it had been written? Those stained and 
yellow pages had once been touched by his white 
hands. We also know that "Romeo and Juliet," a 
play specially connected with Willie Hughes, was 
brought out at Dresden in 161 3, along with "Ham- 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. IO9 

let" and "King Lear," and certain of Marlowe's 
plays, and it was surely to none other than Willie 
Hughes himself that in 16 17 the death-mask of 
Shakespeare was brought by one of the suite of the 
English ambassador, pale token of the passing away 
of the great poet who had so dearly loved him. In' 
deed there was something peculiarly fitting in the 
idea that the boyactor, whose beauty had been 
so vital an element in the realism and romance of 
Shakespeare's art, had been the first to have brought 
to Germany the seed of the new culture, and was 
in his way the precursor of the Aufkjdrung or II' 
lumination of the eighteenth century, that splendid 
movement which, though begun by Lessing and 
Herder, and brought to its full and perfect issue by 
Goethe, was in no small part helped on by a young 
actor — Friedrich Schroeder — who awoke the pop' 
ular consciousness, and by means of the feigned pas' 
sions and mimetic methods of the stage showed the 
intimate, the vital, connection between life and lit' 
erature. If this was so, — and there was certainly 
no evidence against it, — it was not improbable that 
Willie Hughes was one of those English comedians 



IIO THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

(mimi quidam ex Britannia, as the old chronicle 
calls them), who were slain at Nuremberg in a suaV 
den uprising of the people, and were secretly buried 
in a little vineyard outside the city by some young 
men "who had found pleasure in their performances, 
and of whom some had sought to be instructed 
in the mysteries of the new art." Certainly no more 
fitting place could there be for him to whom Shake' 
speare said "thou art all my art," than this little 
vineyard outside the city walls. For was it not from 
the sorrows of Dionysos that Tragedy sprang? Was 
not the light laughter of Comedy, with its careless 
merriment and quick replies, first heard on the lips 
of the Sicilian vinedressers? Nay, did not the pur- 
ple and red stain of the wine'froth on face and limbs 
give the first suggestion of the charm and fascina- 
tion of disguise? — the desire for self-concealment,the 
sense of the value of objectivity, thus showing itself 
in the rude beginnings of the art. At any rate, wher- 
ever he lay — whether in the little vineyard at the 
gate of the Gothic town, or in some dim London 
churchyard amidst the roar and bustle of our great 
city — no gorgeous monument marked his resting 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. Ill 

place. His true tomb, as Shakespeare saw, was the 
poet's verse, his true monument the permanence 
of the drama. So had it been with others whose 
beauty had given a new creative impulse to their 
age. The ivory body of the Bithynian slave rots in 
the green oose of the Nile, and on the yellow hills 
of the Cerameicus is strewn the dust of the young 
Athenian; but Antinous lives in sculpture, and 
Charmides in philosophy. 



V 

A young Elizabethan, who was enamoured of a 
girl so white that he named her Alba, has left on 
record the impression produced on him by one of 
the first performances of "Love's Labours Lost! 1 Ad' 
mirable though the actors were, and they played 
"in cunning wise," he tells us, especially those who 
took the lovers' parts, he was conscious that every 
thing was "feigned," that nothing came "from the 
heart," that though they appeared to grieve they 
"felt no care," and were merely presenting "a show 
in jest." Yet, suddenly, this fanciful comedy of un- 
real romance became to him, as he sat in the audi- 
ence, the real tragedy of his life. The moods of his 
own soul seemed to have taken shape and sub- 
stance, and to be moving before him. His grief had a 
mask that smiled, and his sorrow wore gay raiment. 
Behind the bright and quickly^changing pageant of 
the stage, he saw himself, as one sees one's image in 
a fantastic glass. The very words that came to the 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 113 

actors' lips were wrung out of his pain. Their false 
tears were of his shedding. 

There are few of us who have not felt some' 
thing akin to this. We become lovers when we see 
Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. 
The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Ti' 
mon we rage against the world, and when Lear 
wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness 
touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desde' 
mona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago. Art, even the 
art of fullest scope and widest vision, can never 
really show us the external world. All that it shows 
us is our own soul, the one world of which we have 
any real cognizance. And the soul itself, the soul of 
each one of us, is to each one of us a mystery. It 
hides in the dark and broods, and consciousness can' 
not tell us of its workings. Consciousness, indeed, 
is quite inadequate to explain the contents of per' 
sonality. It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to 
ourselves. 

We sit at the play with the woman we love, or 
listen to the music in some Oxford garden, or stroll 
with our friend through the cool galleries of the 



114 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

Pope's house at Rome, and suddenly we become 
aware that we have passions of which we have 
never dreamed, thoughts that make us afraid, pleas' 
ures whose secret has been denied to us, sorrows 
that have been hidden from our tears. The actor is 
unconscious of our presence: the musician is think' 
ing of the subtlety of the fugue, of the tone of his 
instrument; the marble gods that smile so curiously 
at us are made of insensate stone. But they have 
given form and substance to what was within us; 
they have enabled us to realise our personality ; and 
a sense of perilous joy, or some touch or thrill of 
pain, or that strange self'pity that man so often feels 
for himself, comes over us and leaves us different. 
Some such impression the Sonnets of Shakespeare 
had certainly produced on me. As from opal dawns 
to sunsets of withered rose I read and re-read them 
in garden or chamber, it seemed to me that I was 
deciphering the story of a life that had once been 
mine, unrolling the record of a romance that, with' 
out my knowing it, had coloured the very texture 
of my nature, had dyed it with strange and subtle 
dyes. Art, as so often happens, had taken the place 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. II5 

of personal experience. I felt as if I had been ini' 
tiated into the secret of that passionate friendship, 
that love of beauty and beauty of love, of which 
Marsilio Ficino tells us, and of which the Sonnets, 
in their noblest and purest significance, may be held 
to be the perfect expression. 

Yes: I had lived it all. I had stood in the round 
theatre with its open roof and fluttering banners, 
had seen the stage draped with black for a tragedy, 
or set with gay garlands for some brighter show. 
The young gallants came out with their pages, and 
took their seats in front of the tawny curtain that 
hung from the satypcarved pillars of the inner 
scene. They were insolent and debonair in their 
fantastic dresses. Some of them wore French love' 
locks, and white doublets stiff with Italian embroi' 
dery of gold thread, and long hose of blue or pale 
yellow silk. Others were all in black, and carried 
huge plumed hats. These affected the Spanish fash' 
ion. As they played at cards, and blew thin wreaths 
of smoke from the tiny pipes that the pages lit for 
them, the truant prentices and idle schoolboys that 
thronged the yard mocked them. But they only 



Il6 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

smiled at each other. In the side boxes some masked 
women were sitting. One of them was waiting with 
hungry eyes and bitten lips for the drawing back of 
the curtain. As the trumpet sounded for the third 
time she leant forward, and I saw her olive skin and 
ravens -wing hair. I knew her. She had marred for 
a season the great friendship of my life. Yet there 
was something about her that fascinated me. 

The play changed according to my mood. Some" 
times it was "Hamlet." Taylor acted the Prince, and 
there were many who wept when Ophelia went mad. 
Sometimes it was "Romeo and Juliet." Burbage was 
Romeo. He hardly looked the part of the young Ital- 
ian, but there was a rich music in his voice, and 
passionate beauty in every gesture. I saw "As You 
Like It," and "Cymbeline," and "Twelfth Night," 
and in each play there was some one whose life was 
bound up into mine, who realised for me every dream, 
and gave shape to every fancy. How gracefully he 
moved ! The eyes of the audience were fixed on him. 

And yet it was in this century that it had all hap- 
pened. I had never seen my friend, but he had been 
with me for many years, and it was to his influence 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 117 

that I had owed my passion for Greek thought and 
art, and indeed all my sympathy with the Hellenic 
spirit. <I>iA.oaocpeiv [A8t' eodrrog! Ho w that phrase 
had stirred me in my Oxford days! I did not un^ 
derstand then why it was so. But I knew now. 
There had been a presence beside me always. Its 
silver feet had trod night's shadowy meadows, 
and the white hands had moved aside the trem- 
bling curtains of the dawn. It had walked with me 
through the grey cloisters, and when I sat reading 
in my room, it was there also. What though I had 
been unconscious of it? The soul had a life of its 
own, and the brain its own sphere of action. There 
was something within us that knew nothing of se- 
quence or extension, and yet, like the philosopher 
of the Ideal City, was the spectator of all time and 
of all existence. It had senses that quickened, pas- 
sions that came to birth, spiritual ecstasies of con- 
templation, ardours of fiery-coloured love. It was 
we who were unreal, and our conscious life was the 
least important part of our development. The soul, 
the secret soul, was the only reality. 

How curiously it had all been revealed to me! A 



Il8 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

book of sonnets, published nearly three hundred 
years ago, written by a dead hand and in honour of 
a dead youth, had suddenly explained to me the 
whole story of my soul's romance. I remembered 
how once in Egypt I had been present at the open' 
ing of a frescoed coffin that had been found in one 
of the basalt tombs at Thebes. Inside there was the 
body of a young girl swathed in tight bands of linen, 
and with a gilt mask over the face. As I stooped 
down to look at it, I had seen that one of the little 
withered hands held a scroll of yellow papyrus 
covered with strange characters. How I wished 
now that I had had it read to me! It might have 
told me something more about the soul that hid 
within me, and had its mysteries of passion of which 
I was kept in ignorance. Strange, that we knew so 
little about ourselves, and that our most intimate 
personality was concealed from us! Were we to 
look in tombs for our real life, and in art for the 
legend of our days? 

Week after week, I pored over these poems, and 
each new form of knowledge seemed to me a mode 
of reminiscence. Finally, after two months had 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 1 9 

elapsed, I determined to make a strong appeal to 
Erskine to do justice to the memory of Cyril Gra* 
ham, and to give to the world his marvellous inter' 
pretation of the Sonnets — the only interpretation 
that thoroughly explained the problem. I have not 
any copy of my letter, I regret to say, nor have I 
been able to lay my hand upon the original; but I 
remember that I went over the whole ground, and 
covered sheets of paper with passionate reiteration 
of the arguments and proofs that my study had sug- 
gested to me. 

It seemed to me that I was not merely restoring 
Cyril Graham to his proper place in literary history, 
but rescuing the honour of Shakespeare himself 
from the tedious memory of a commonplace in" 
trigue. I put into the letter all my enthusiasm. I put 
into the letter all my faith. 

No sooner, in fact, had I sent it off than a curious 
reaction came over me. It seemed to me that I had 
given away my capacity for belief in the Willie 
Hughes theory of the Sonnets, that something had 
gone out of me, as it were, and that I was perfectly 
indifferent to the whole subject. What was it that 



120 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

had happened? It is difficult to say. Perhaps, by 
finding perfect expression for a passion, I had ex' 
hausted the passion itself. Emotional forces, like 
the forces of physical life, have their positive limi' 
tations. Perhaps the mere effort to convert any one 
to a theory involves some form of renunciation of 
the power of credence. Influence is simply a trans' 
ference of personality, a mode of giving away what 
is most precious to one's self, and its exercise pre 
duces a sense, and, it may be, a reality of loss. Every 
disciple takes away something from his master. Or 
perhaps I had become tired of the whole thing, 
wearied of its fascination, and, my enthusiasm hav 
ing burnt out, my reason was left to its own unmv 
passioned judgment. However it came about, and 
I cannot pretend to explain it, there was no doubt 
that Willie Hughes suddenly became to me a mere 
myth, an idle dream, the boyish fancy of a young 
man who, like most ardent spirits, was more anxious 
to convince others than to be himself convinced. 

I must admit that this was a bitter disappoint- 
ment to me. I had gone through every phase of 
this great romance. I had lived with it, and it had 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 121 

become part of my nature. How was it that it had 
left me? Had I touched upon some secret that my 
soul desired to conceal? Or was there no perma' 
nence in personality? Did things come and go 
through the brain, silently, swiftly, and without 
footprints, like shadows through a mirror? Were 
we at the mercy of such impressions as Art or Life 
chose to give us? It seemed to me to be so. 

It was at night'time that this feeling first came to 
me. I had sent my servant out to post the letter to 
Erskine, and was seated at the window looking out 
at the blue and gold city. The moon had not yet 
risen, and there was only one star in the sky, but 
the streets were full of quick! ymoving and flashing 
lights, and the windows of Devonshire House were 
illuminated for a great dinner to be given to some 
of the foreign princes then visiting London. I saw 
the scarlet liveries of the royal carriages, and the 
crowd hustling about the sombre gates of the 
courtyard. 

Suddenly, I said to myself: "I have been dream' 
ing, and all my life for these two months has been un' 
real. There was no such person as Willie Hughes." 



122 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

Something like a faint cry of pain came to my lips 
as I began to realise how I had deceived myself, and 
I buried my face in my hands, struck with a sorrow 
greater than any I had felt since boyhood. After a 
few moments I rose, and going into the library took 
up the Sonnets, and began to read^them. But it was 
all to no avail. They gave me back nothing of the 
feeling that I had brought to them; they revealed 
to me nothing of what I had found hidden in their 
lines. Had I merely been influenced by the beauty 
of the forged portrait, charmed by that Shelleylike 
face into faith and credence? Or, as Erskine had sug' 
gested, was it the pathetic tragedy of Cyril Graham's 
death that had so deeply stirred me? I could not tell. 
To the present day I cannot understand the begin' 
ning or the end of this strange passage in my life. 

However, as I had said some very unjust and bit' 
ter things to Erskine in my letter, I determined to 
go and see him as soon as possible, and make my 
apologies to him for my behaviour. Accordingly, 
the next morning I drove down to Birdcage Walk, 
where I found him sitting in his library, with the 
forged picture of Willie Hughes in front of him. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 23 

" My dear Erskine ! n I cried, " I have come to apol' 
ogise to you." 

"To apologise to me?" he said. "What for?" 

"For my letter," I answered. 

"You have nothing to regret in your letter," he 
said. "On the contrary, you have done me the great' 
est service in your power. You have shown me that 
Cyril Graham's theory is perfectly sound." 

I stared at him in blank wonder. 

"You dont mean to say that you believe inWillie 
Hughes?" I exclaimed. 

"Why not?" he rejoined. "You have proved the 
thing to me. Do you think I cannot estimate the 
value of evidence?" 

"But there is no evidence at all," I groaned, sink' 
ing into a chair. "When I wrote to you I was under 
the influence of a perfectly silly enthusiasm. I had 
been touched by the story of Cyril Graham's death, 
fascinated by his artistic theory, enthralled by the 
wonder and novelty of the whole idea. I see now 
that the theory is based on a delusion. The only 
evidence for the existence of Willie Hughes is that 
picture in front of you, and that picture is a forgery. 



124 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

Don't be carried away by mere sentiment in this 
matter. Whatever romance may have to say about 
the Willie Hughes theory, reason is dead against it." 

"I don't understand you," said Erskine, looking at 
me in amazement. "You have convinced me by your 
letter that Willie Hughes is an absolute reality. 
Why have you changed your mind? Or is all that 
you have been saying to me merely a joke?" 

"I cannot explain it to you," I rejoined, "but I 
see now that there is really nothing to be said in 
favour of Cyril Graham's interpretation. The Son- 
nets may not be addressed to Lord Pembroke. They 
probably are not. But for heaven's sake don't waste 
your time in a foolish attempt to discover a young 
Elizabethan actor who never existed, and to make 
a phantom puppet the centre of the great cycle of 
Shakespeare's Sonnets." 

"I see that you don't understand the theory," he 
replied. 

"My dear Erskine," I cried, "not understand it! 
Why, I feel as if I had invented it. Surely my letter 
shows you that I not merely went into the whole 
matter, but that I contributed proofs of every kind. 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 25 

The one flaw in the theory is that it presupposes 
the existence of the person whose existence is the 
subject of dispute. If we grant that there was in 
Shakespeare's company a young actor of the name 
of Willie Hughes, it is not difficult to make him the 
object of the Sonnets. But as we know that there 
was no actor of this name in the company of the 
Globe Theatre, it is idle to pursue the investigation 
further." 

"But that is exactly what we don't know," said 
Erskine. "It is quite true that his name does not 
occur in the list given in the first folio; but, as Cyril 
pointed out, that is rather a proof in favour of the 
existence of Willie Hughes than against it, if we 
remember his treacherous desertion of Shakespeare 
for a rival dramatist. Besides," and here I must ad' 
mit that Erskine made what seems to me now a 
rather good point, though, at the time, I laughed at 
it, " there is no reason at all why Willie Hughes 
should not have gone upon the stage under an as' 
sumed name. In fact it is extremely probable that 
he did so. We know that there was a very strong 
prejudice against the theatre in his day, and noth' 



126 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

ing is more likely than that his family insisted upon 
his adopting some nom de plume. The editors of the 
first folio would naturally put him down under his 
stage name, the name by which he was best known 
to the public, but the Sonnets were of course an en- 
tirely different matter, and in the dedication to them 
the publisher very properly addresses him under his 
real initials. If this be so, and it seems to me the most 
simple and rational explanation of the matter, I re 
gard Cyril Graham's theory as absolutely proved." 

"But what evidence have you?" I exclaimed, lay 
ing my hand on his. "You have no evidence at all. 
It is a mere hypothesis. And which of Shakespeare's 
actors do you think that Willie Hughes was? The 
'pretty fellow' Ben Jonson tells us of, who was so 
fond of dressing up in girls' clothes?" 

"I don't know," he answered rather irritably. "I 
have not had time to investigate the point yet. But 
I feel quite sure that my theory is the true one. Of 
course it is a hypothesis, but then it is a hypothesis 
that explains everything, and if you had been sent 
to Cambridge to study science, instead of to Oxford 
to dawdle over literature, you would know that a 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 27 

hypothesis that explains everything is a certainty." 

"Yes, I am aware that Cambridge is a sort of ed' 
ucational institute," I murmured. "I am glad I was 
not there." 

"My dear fellow," said Erskine, suddenly turn' 
ing his keen grey eyes on me, "you believe in Cyril 
Graham's theory, you believe in Willie Hughes, 
you know that the Sonnets are addressed to an actor, 
but for some reason or other you won't acknowl' 
edge it." 

"I wish I could believe it," I rejoined. "I would 
give anything to be able to do so. But I can't. It is 
a sort of moonbeam theory, very lovely, very fas' 
cinating, but intangible. When one thinks that one 
has got hold of it, it escapes one. No: Shakespeare's 
heart is still to us 'a closet never pierc'd with crys' 
tal eyes,' as he calls it in one of the sonnets. We 
shall never know the true secret of the passion of 
his life." 

Erskine sprang from the sofa, and paced up and 
down the room. "We know it already," he cried, 
"and the world shall know it some day." 

I had never seen him so excited. He would not 



128 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

hear of my leaving him, and insisted on my stop- 
ping for the rest of the day. 

We argued the matter over for hours, but noth' 
ing that I could say could make him surrender his 
faith in Cyril Graham's interpretation. He told me 
that he intended to devote his life to proving the 
theory, and that he was determined to do justice to 
Cyril Graham's memory. I entreated him, laughed 
at him, begged of him, but it was to no use. Finally 
we parted, not exactly in anger, but certainly with 
a shadow between us. He thought me shallow, I 
thought him foolish. When I called on him again, his 
servant told me that he had gone to Germany. The 
letters that I wrote to him remained unanswered. 

Two years afterwards, as I was going into my 
club, the hall porter handed me a letter with a for' 
eign postmark. It was from Erskine, and written at 
the Hotel d'Angleterre, Cannes. When I had read 
it, I was filled with horror, though I did not quite 
believe that he would be so mad as to carry his 
resolve into execution. The gist of the letter was 
that he had tried in every way to verify the Willie 
Hughes theory, and had failed, and that as Cyril 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 29 

Graham had given his life for this theory, he him- 
self had determined to give his own life also to the 
same cause. The concluding words of the letter 
were these: "I still believe in Willie Hughes; and 
by the time you receive this I shall have died by 
my own hand for Willie Hughes' sake: for his sake, 
and for the sake of Cyril Graham, whom I drove to 
his death by my shallow scepticism and ignorant 
lack of faith. The truth was once revealed to you, 
and you rejected it. It comes to you now, stained 
with the blood of two lives, — do not turn away 
from it." 

It was a horrible moment. I felt sick with mis- 
ery, and yet I could not believe that he would really 
carry out his intention. To die for one's theological 
opinions is the worst use a man can make of his life; 
but to die for a literary theory ! It seemed impossible. 

I looked at the date. The letter was a week old. 
Some unfortunate chance had prevented my going 
to the club for several days, or I might have got it 
in time to save him. Perhaps it was not too late. I 
drove off to my rooms, packed up my things, and 
started by the night mail from Charing Cross. The 



I30 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

journey was intolerable. I thought I would never 
arrive. 

As soon as I did, I drove to the Hotel d' Angle" 
terre. It was quite true. Erskine was dead. They 
told me that he had been buried two days before in 
the English cemetery. There was something horri' 
bly grotesque about the whole tragedy. I said all 
kinds of wild things,and the peopleinthehalllooked 
curiously at me. 

Suddenly Lady Erskine, in deep mourning, passed 
across the vestibule. When she saw me she came 
up to me, murmured something about her poor son, 
and burst into tears. I led her into her sitting room. 
An elderly gentleman was there, reading a news' 
paper. It was the English doctor. 

We talked a great deal about Erskine, but I said 
nothing about his motive for committing suicide. 
It was evident that he had not told his mother any 
thing about the reason that had driven him to so 
fatal, so mad an act. Finally Lady Erskine rose and 
said, "George left you something as a memento. It 
was a thing he prized very much. I will get it for 
you." 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W, H. 131 

As soon as she had left the room I turned to the 
doctor and said, "What a dreadful shock it must 
have been for Lady Erskine! I wonder that she 
bears it as well as she does." 

"Oh, she knew for months past that it was com' 
ing," he answered. 

"Knew it for months past!" I cried. "But why 
didn't she stop him? Why didn't she have him 
watched? He must have been out of his mind." 

The doctor stared at me. "I don't know what 
you mean," he said. 

"Well," I cried, "if a mother knows that her son 
is going to commit suicide — " 

"Suicide!" he answered. "Poor Erskine did not 
commit suicide. He died of consumption. He came 
here to die. The moment I saw him I knew that 
there was no chance. One lung was almost gone, and 
the other was very much affected. Three days be' 
fore he died he asked me was there any hope. I told 
him frankly that there was none, and that he had 
only a few days to live. He wrote some letters, and 
was quite resigned, retaining his senses to the last." 

I got up from my seat, and going over to the open 



132 THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 

window I looked out on the crowded promenade. 
I remember that the brightly-coloured umbrellas 
and gay parasols seemed to me like huge fantastic 
butterflies fluttering by the shore of a blue-metal 
sea, and that the heavy odour of violets that came 
across the garden made me think of that wonderful 
sonnet in which Shakespeare tells us that the scent 
of these flowers always reminded him of his friend. 
What did it all mean? Why had Erskine written 
me that extraordinary letter? Why when standing 
at the very gate of death had he turned back to tell 
me what was not true ? Was Hugo right? Is affecta' 
tion the only thing that accompanies a man up the 
steps of the scaffold? Did Erskine merely want to 
produce a dramatic effect? That was not like him. 
It was more like something I might have done my 
self. No: he was simply actuated by a desire to 
reconvert me to Cyril Graham's theory, and he 
thought that if I could be made to believe that he 
too had given his life for it, I would be deceived by 
the pathetic fallacy of martyrdom. Poor Erskine! I 
had grown wiser since I had seen him. Martyrdom 
was to me merely a tragic form of scepticism, an 



THE PORTRAIT OF MR W. H. 1 33 

attempt to realise by fire what one had failed to do 
by faith. No man dies for what he knows to be true. 
Men die for what they want to be true, for what 
some terror in their hearts tells them is not true. 
The very uselessness of Erskine's letter made me 
doubly sorry for him. I watched the people stroll' 
ing in and out of the cafes, and wondered if any of 
them had known him. The white dust blew down 
the scorched sunlit road, and the feathery palms 
moved restlessly in the shaken air. 

At that moment Lady Erskine returned to the 
room carrying the fatal portrait of Willie Hughes. 
"When George was dying, he begged me to give 
you this," she said. As I took it from her, her tears 
fell on my hand. 

This curious work of art hangs now in my library, 
where it is very much admired by my artistic friends, 
one of whom has etched it for me. They have de- 
cided that it is not a Clouet, but an Ouvry. I have 
never cared to tell them its true history, but some 
times, when I look at it, I think there is really a 
great deal to be said for the Willie Hughes theory 
of Shakespeare's Sonnets. 



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